Once again, I am in debt to Anger Management for a timely tip-off to developments at the State Department's Office of the Historian (HO). When he last updated me, the management and morale problems at the HO were being investigated by the Office of the Inspector-General (OIG). Today, he provided a link to the published OIG report: Management Review of the Office of the Historian Bureau of Public Affairs U.S. Department of State (ISP-I-09-43) (May 09). Big Hat Tip!!
As expected, the OIG's recommendation #1 is that the Director of the Office of the Historian be reassigned. Evidently, that has already happened, and Ambassador John Campbell is currently acting. The report also addresses production of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series, general office administration, funding, physical plant, new hiring, and the need for developing document security procedures that will better meet the requirements of the FRUS historical compilers.
It all sounds very good. Here's hoping that the Office, its historians, and the FRUS series will quickly recover from their recent troubles and come back better than ever.
1 comment:
Glad I can help out!
Steve Aftergood has also given his take on the report at Secrecy News, and the Washington Post has finally decided that the imbroglio is worth a story.
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