Redirecting Development Assistance Not Smart (and Certainly Not Smart Contracting)

President Obama unveiled key changes in how the U.S would distribute foreign assistance last week. Not least among the changes will be providing U.S. assistance directly to recipient-nation governments under the presumption such “direct assistance” will build that nation’s economic capabilities faster and better than the use of grants or contracts to development firms and non-profit organizations does today.

However well intentioned this effort may be, it does not account for some of the avoidable risks and obvious dangers attached with making cash transfers to nations that are receiving assistance precisely because they lack the governance structures required to effectively grow their economies, educate their populace and otherwise provide for the poorest of the poor in their nations. Nor is the presumption behind shifting toward direct assistance grounded in fact, as there is no evidence that implementing partners are not effective in achieving U.S. development goals through grants or contracts.

But, as they say on Reading Rainbow, “you don’t have to take my word for it.” Just pick up September’s edition of Service Contractor and you’ll find an in-depth explanation on the risks of direct assistance written by development professional Tonya Giannoni, chief operating officer of DevTech Systems and a tri-chair of PSC’s International Development Task Force.

Guest Blog: PDD on Global Development “Step in the Right Direction;” Sustained Leadership Needed to Ensure Success

By Stan Soloway

Professional Services Council President and CEO

Yesterday, President Obama signed a Presidential Decision Directive on Global Development (PDD) and described a new, unified policy approach to international development in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly High Level Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. PSC and its international development firm members support the elevation of development as a co-equal third pillar of national power, alongside diplomacy and defense. We believe the articulation of a U.S. Global Development Strategy will bring needed coherence and momentum to aid programs that are fragmented and duplicative. In discussions with Obama administration officials, we have supported plans to rebuild USAID as the nation’s leading voice in development issues and as the clear leader of a coordinated “whole of government” approach to foreign assistance.

PSC welcomes the president’s focus on economic growth as the fundamental force that will eventually transform the developing world and we support the president’s call to “use all the tools at our disposal” to achieve complex and difficult development goals. However, U.S. government support for greater “country ownership” should not be read as a code phrase for a wholesale shift away from the use of U.S development firms to direct assistance to foreign governments and organizations. Design and delivery modes for development projects must still be strategically tied to program goals and must reflect the political, social, economic and governance capabilities of the recipient nations and organizations.

Contractors who make the ultimate sacrifice go unnoticed, until now

Congressional overseers have long lamented that the Defense Department had no accurate accounting for the number of contractors on the battlefield. Unlamented, however, is the fact that the department fails to accurately account for the number of contractors killed or injured in the line of duty supporting those who are protecting our nation.

But perhaps that is because the facts represent an inconvenient truth, as procurement law expert Steven Schooner and Collin Swan report in this quarter’s edition of Service Contractor. In the first two quarters of 2010 alone, contractors accounted for 53 percent of all fatalities in both Iraq and Afghanistan, they found.

Guest Blog: Reaching the Millennium Development Goals: Use All the Tools of International Development

By Stan Soloway
Professional Services Council President and CEO

As the U.N. General Assembly gathers to measure progress toward the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, they can take pride in celebrating important accomplishments, but should also begin to consider what happens when many of those ambitious plans are not met. The global needle has moved in a positive direction to address global poverty, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, HIV/AIDs, environmental sustainability and development partnerships, but U.N. officials have admitted that some goals in many places are already beyond reach. A weak global economy will get most of the blame, but how much money is spent does not alone account for the failure to meet key development targets. Policies on how international aid is delivered also need to be examined in light of new global realities.

One key policy debate deals with the role of the private sector in funding and delivering development assistance. Some decry the “privatization” of aid projects funded by foundations and corporations while others denounce the use of contractors from donor nations as high-cost colonialism. MDG gaps and failures will be offered as proof of insufficient “ownership” of aid projects and that only local buy-in, purchased through direct transfer of funds to recipient-nation governments and non-profits, guarantees development success.

These arguments overlook the vital role private sector donors and implementers already play in advancing developing nations from unproductive dependence to self-sustaining economic and governance capabilities. The Obama administration’s MDG strategy prudently looks to leverage innovation, deploy new technologies and introduce “new business models to make aid agencies and the international development architecture more effective.” That recognition that development is about doing business is a good first step toward a balanced, effective assistance strategy for the MDGs and beyond.

SmartContracting Blog Meets Smart Contracting Caucus, Learns about Cybersecurity Challenges

Speakers from two PSC member companies, SRA and Mircosoft, were on Capitol Hill Sept. 16 to explain the challenges facing the public-private partnership fighting cyber threats. They participated in a special meeting of the House Smart Contracting Caucus (LOVE the name!) hosted by caucus member Rep. Gerry Connolly, VA-11.

 

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, cybersecurity is one of the top threats to our national security. Connolly and the panelists—Patrick Burke, senior vice president for offerings and products with SRA; Jerry Cochran, chief cybersecurity architect for Microsoft Public Sector Services; and Jessica Herrera-Flanigan, partner at Monument Policy Group and member of the CSIS Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency—were in general agreement that among the top hurdles facing both government and industry in tackling this threat are:

 

• Inadequate information sharing between the sectors to ensure threats are addressed in a timely manner;
• A shortage of public and private sector employees with the skills necessary to stay abreast of the ever-evolving, global threat;
• Undefined leadership roles and responsibilities among agencies and contractors; 
• A lack of a common lexicon regarding cybersecurity terminology and threats; and
• No broad policy for assessing and managing the risk to government and private sector systems.

All agreed that these challenges have long faced both the public and private sector. This Congress has attempted to address these matters through legislation, but none has passed to date. Some of the bills would take important steps to clarify leadership in the executive branch, define the roles and responsibilities of the public and private sectors, and establish compliance reporting structures. According to Connolly, it is unlikely that any of the bills will pass Congress before or after the election.

 

That means the government and private sector will have to start the entire process from scratch in the new Congress. Meanwhile, the cyber threat continues to evolve and the government and private sector continue to fight it as best they can.

PSC Members Honored as 2010 Government Contractor Award Finalists

The brightest lights of the government contracting world shined Tuesday night at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner during the second most anticipated event of the year: the announcement of the finalists for the 8th Annual Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards (aka the GovCon Awards)! PSC member companies are in the running for six of the seven awards, thanks to some pretty smart contracting. The full list of finalists can be found here. The winners will be announced at the most anticipated event of the year: the Nov. 3 GovCon gala dinner!

While we all await the big event to hear who the industry winners are, we can applaud three honorees already named. They are the two public-sector partners honorees—Charlie Williams, the director of the Defense Contract Management Agency, and Soraya Correa, the director of the Office of Procurement Operations at the Homeland Security Department—and this year’s Greater Washington Government Contractor Hall of Fame inductee—Clifford Kendall, founder of Computer Data Systems, Inc.

Guest Blog: Washington Post’s "Political Bookworm" argument about development assistance is full of holes

By Lawrence J. Halloran

Director of PSC's International Development Initiative

The Washington Post’s "Political Bookworm," Steven Levingston, should have burrowed a bit deeper before he published the Sept. 2 commentary by Rachel McCleary, a senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

In her guest blog, McCleary claims U.S. humanitarian aid should be “reclaimed” from the pernicious influences of for-profit development firms. She argues that non-profit private voluntary organizations should deliver the bulk of U.S. development assistance because they are apolitical, impartial and transnational, “that is, not identified with national ideologies or driven by short-term policy agendas.” But she offers no proof to suggest for-profit firms are the opposite.

Nor does she address the more pertinent issue of performance. Nowhere in her piece does she argue that non-profits are more effective or cheaper at completing development projects than tax-paying U.S. development firms. In effect, McCleary demands a needless, ultimately counterproductive, choice between aid delivery actors based on a misreading of the facts and a misunderstanding of how indispensible both U.S. companies and non-profits are to achieving humanitarian and development goals under the most difficult conditions on earth. Her post is replete with inaccuracies and irrelevancies, like where an organization is headquartered and its headquarter's proximity to Congress, rather than where it does the work and what the work achieves.

Top Secret Contractor (and Other Government Contractor) Compensation Facts EXPOSED!

Holders of “top secret” clearances draw top salaries as demands for their credentials grow in the government contract marketplace. That’s one of the findings PSC’s Executive Vice President Alan Chvotkin presented today at the unveiling of the Human Resources Association of the National Capital Area 2010 Compensation Survey, which included a section on government contractor compensation.