Office of Insular Affairs

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Office of Insular Affairs

Seal and Logo of the Office of Insular Affairs
Agency overview
Formed	September 14, 1934
Preceding agencies	Office of Territorial Affairs Division of Territories and Island Possessions
Jurisdiction	United States federal government
Headquarters	Main Interior Building 1849 C Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20240
Employees	40 permanent
Annual budget	$597 million (2015)
Agency executive	Carmen Cantor, Assistant Secretary for Insular Areas
Parent agency	Department of the Interior
Website	Official website

The Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) is a unit of the United States Department of the Interior that oversees federal administration of several United States insular areas. It is the successor to the Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department, which administered certain territories from 1902 to 1939, and the Office of Territorial Affairs (formerly the Division of Territories and Island Possessions and then the Office of Territories) in the Interior Department, which was responsible for certain territories from the 1930s to the 1990s. The word "insular" comes from the Latin word insula ("island").

Currently, the OIA has administrative responsibility for coordinating federal policy in the territories of American Samoa, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and oversight of federal programs and funds in the freely associated Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.

The OIA, led by the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Insular Areas, also has jurisdiction of "excluded areas" of Palmyra Atoll^[1] and "residual administration" of Wake Island.^[2]

Relations between the United States and Puerto Rico are coordinated between the Office of the Deputy Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, not the OIA.