Compliance Follow-up Review of the Inspection of Embassy Panama City, Panama (ISP-C-02-20)
Embassy Panama City and the Department have done a good job of addressing the concerns raised by the inspection report (ISP/I-01-02). The embassy agreed with and promptly acted upon most of the recommendations. On others, primarily involving American position reductions in the political/economic and public affairs sections, the post convinced OIG that, in fact, the positions were needed. Several recommendations were reissued or modified. The most significant was the call for a new chancery compound to replace the present insecure, inefficient chancery and annexes scattered around the city. The Department has responded positively, and is currently scheduled to begin the process of replacing the chancery compound in FY 2003. The CFR team devoted considerable attention to the antiterrorist recommendations for the embassy to ?activate its Visas Viper Program to require more effective information sharing.? The post made sufficient progress on this important recommendation for it to be closed. Similarly focused on U.S. border security, an earlier recommendation called for funding a part-time position to coordinate the post?s alien smuggling intelligence database. Although OIG previously closed this recommendation, the CFR team reissued it because the team and the Bureau of Consular Affairs feel that Panama is an important transient illegal alien choke point. To help combat this threat, OIG modified and reissued a recommendation dealing with alien smuggling intelligence coordination
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