US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is slated to testify about the status of the "Impact Initiative" in front of Corker’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the end of February. | Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images Tillerson scales back State Department restructuring plan After stiff resistance from diplomats and lawmakers, the secretary of state is lowering expectations.

When Secretary of State Rex Tillerson first announced plans to “redesign” the State Department, U.S. diplomats braced for huge changes ranging from shuttered embassies to dramatic staff and budget cuts. As Tillerson failed to fill top leadership positions, some staffers worried the former ExxonMobil CEO was arrogantly dismissive of their mission.

But a year into his much-criticized tenure, Tillerson is scaling back people's expectations of his vision. Far from swinging a wrecking ball into the 75,000-employee department, Tillerson looks ready to tap with a hammer and chisel.


State Department officials say that talk of closing down entire wings of the department has been replaced with narrower plans to upgrade technology and improve training. Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress have declared dead on arrival a Tillerson-supported White House plan to cut State’s budget by 30 percent.

It’s not clear whether Tillerson has modified his goals for shaking up the department because he’s encountered stumbling blocks or because he never really intended to make huge structural changes in the first place. But his more limited ambitions could assuage fears — expressed by many veteran diplomats — that he will oversee a gutting of the State Department that could hobble American diplomacy at an uncertain moment in world politics.

State Department staffers expect to receive an update as early as this week on a new phase in Tillerson’s organizational plans, according to senior department official. Out is the term “redesign” — which spawned confusion, dissent and leaks. The new stage is being called “The Impact Initiative,” which will implement changes that Tillerson has deemed achievable priorities in the face of bureaucratic and congressional hurdles. (Tillerson aides insist he’s not rebranding the overall effort, just moving from the poorly named “redesign” phase, which gathered ideas, to a new one that implements them.)

The to-do list is based on surveys of department employees, Tillerson and his aides have stressed. The changes are expected to include switching State’s email and related technologies to cloud-based services; a plan to merge scattered databases; and helping diplomats overseas be more efficient, such as cutting back on tasks that can be performed by people in Washington.

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Even many career diplomats critical of Tillerson concede that many State Department technologies and procedures are outdated and could benefit from reform, though they remain skeptical of Tillerson’s intentions.

The details of the new plan, expected to be sent in a cable to U.S. diplomatic missions worldwide, are to include the introduction of an internal website designed to update staffers on the status of the planned changes. The website lets State employees sign up for a newsletter to get regular updates. Its sections, according to visuals shown to POLITICO, include “Vision and Mission” and “Modernization Goals.” The site's creation suggests that Tillerson wants to improve his communication with State employees, many of whom see him as aloof and are unhappy that so many top slots at the department remain empty.

The senior State Department official said Tillerson also is planning to select someone to oversee the Impact Initiative but declined to say whom. (The Impact Initiative is shorthand for a longer moniker that Tillerson, an engineer by training, signed off on: “Leadership + Modernization = Greater Mission Impact.”)

The new phase comes after months of Tillerson trying to lower expectations for what he hopes to achieve through his reforms. He has publicly discouraged the use of the phrase “reorganization,” saying it wrongly implies major structural changes such as consolidating or rearranging large portions of the department. In a December town hall with staffers, the secretary also listed several of the reforms in technology and other areas that he hoped to implement.

Tillerson has made one key change to State’s organization chart: He has eliminated or is moving to cut dozens of special envoy offices, usually transferring their functions to other bureaus in the department. There’s no longer a special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, for instance; those duties have been returned to the South and Central Asia bureau.

Still, while some analysts and diplomats thought Tillerson might do away with entire bureaus, including Economic and Business Affairs or Conflict and Stabilization Operations, he hasn’t. Tillerson has batted away suggestions that State’s consular affairs division, which deals with visas, be turned over to the Department of Homeland Security. He’s also decided, for now at least, to retain State’s Population, Refugees and Migration bureau, despite hostility from President Donald Trump and other top officials in the White House toward refugees.

The redesign has led to an unusual clash between the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that nonetheless works closely with State and which is undergoing its own modernization drive under Administrator Mark Green. USAID leaders recently told officials there to suspend their cooperation on redesign efforts with State counterparts, sources inside USAID confirmed to POLITICO. The news was reported first by Bloomberg News.

Current and former USAID officials say one point of friction involves Tillerson’s December unveiling of what appeared to be a new USAID mission statement that sources said hadn’t been vetted first by the agency. Tillerson characterized USAID as operating “under the auspices” of State. That raised hackles at the agency — “People were very unhappy,” one USAID official said. A few weeks later, Ben Cardin, who was the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to Tillerson urging him to rescind that mission statement.

One USAID official said another sticking point in the USAID-State talks on redesign was who would be in control of the Office of U.S. Foreign Assistance Resources, which is currently under State’s umbrella. That office leads the coordination of foreign aid spending.

A USAID spokesman dismissed reports that the agency had stopped cooperating with the State Department, saying both sides continue to work together on issues including crafting USAID’s mission statement.

“As we enter this new phase of the process, USAID is clarifying the roles and responsibilities of USAID staff who will be working with State on the Impact Initiative, and the exact outcomes and timelines for each project,” the spokesman said in a statement. A State Department spokesman said the department had nothing further to add.

In recent months, USAID officials and their allies have been in touch with lawmakers from both parties to make sure their independence is assured in any redesign initiative. Green is a popular figure on Capitol Hill, whereas Tillerson has struggled in his relationships with some key lawmakers. Republican Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been broadly supportive of Tillerson as secretary, but he has expressed worries about where Tillerson’s redesign is headed.

Tillerson is slated to testify about the status of the redesign, or Impact Initiative, in front of Corker’s committee at the end of February.