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.
The PDD should provide coherent direction to development programs that are now poorly coordinated and scattered across numerous departments, agencies and programs. To harmonize development policy across the executive branch, someone under the president has to be in charge. The new process created to manage a “whole of government” approach to international assistance is a step in the right direction. But to succeed, such a structure will need sustained focus and leadership from the highest levels to avoid the stagnation and turf battles that too often hobble interagency deliberations.
As part of the PDD focus on establishing mechanisms for ensuring coherence in U.S. development policy, the USAID administrator should be a full member of the NSC, not just included “when appropriate.” If development is in fact a co-equal tool of national power, when would it not be appropriate for the NSC to bring development expertise to bear on their deliberations?
Finally, U.S. development firms have highly technical expertise and long experience in the successful implementation of aid projects. Private-sector membership on the new U.S. Global Development Council should include development firms as well international businesses and corporate donors to development programs and foundations.
