US State Department announces comprehensive reorganization plan

File photo taken on Aug. 8, 2018, shows the U.S. Department of State building in Washington D.C., the United States. [Photo/Xinhua]

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced a comprehensive plan to reorganize the U.S. State Department, aiming to deliver on U.S. President Donald Trump's America First foreign policy.

Rubio said in a statement that "we are facing tremendous challenges across the globe" and "In its current form, the Department is bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission in this new era of great power competition."

"Over the past 15 years, the Department's footprint has had unprecedented growth and costs have soared. But far from seeing a return on investment, taxpayers have seen less effective and efficient diplomacy. The sprawling bureaucracy created a system more beholden to radical political ideology than advancing America's core national interests," Rubio noted.

"That is why today I am announcing a comprehensive reorganization plan that will bring the Department into the 21st Century," he said, adding that "This approach will empower the Department from the ground up, from the bureaus to the embassies. Region-specific functions will be consolidated to increase functionality, redundant offices will be removed, and non-statutory programs that are misaligned with America's core national interests will cease to exist."

"These sweeping changes will empower our talented diplomats to put America and Americans first," Rubio also wrote in a post on social media platform X.

The plan will reportedly reduce staff in the United States by 15 percent and eliminate more than 130 domestic offices.

The changes would bring the total number of offices at the State Department's headquarters from 734 to 602. An additional 137 offices will be transitioned to another location within the Department to increase efficiency, CNN reported, citing an internal State Department fact sheet obtained by the news outlet.

The plan will cut around 700 positions in Washington, D.C., and close offices focused on war crimes and global conflict, said the report.

Among the bureaus and offices the administration plans to cut are the Office of Global Women's Issues and its Diversity and Inclusion Office, which were expected given the Trump administration's focus on eliminating such programs from the federal government, The Politico, an American political digital newspaper, reported, adding that the State Department also expects to eliminate some offices previously housed under the undersecretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights, though it is expected that much of their work will continue in other sections of the department.

The State Department also will eliminate the office of the director of the Foreign Service Institute, which provides language training and other educational support for career foreign service officers, said the report.

But a new Bureau of Emerging Threats would be created to focus on cybersecurity and the proliferation of artificial intelligence, among other areas, The Washington Post, one of the major newspapers in the country, reported, noting that the proposed bureau would represent a rare focus on expanding the department's capacity.

Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau said in an email to staff that implementation would be led by an internal working group that would come up with "thoughtful plans" on adopting the changes by July 1, according to the report.