The State Department bestowed an early Christmas present on the international development community last week when it unwrapped the long-awaited Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR). And like those slipper-socks from Aunt Minnie, the QDDR isn’t exactly what was hoped for, but contained some necessities.
PSC was pleased to see that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will make good on their promises to properly train and equip their in-house staff to strengthen their contract and program management capabilities. The proposed creation of a working capital fund at USAID (similar to the one in place at State) to ensure the resources are available for this effort is a particularly smart idea.
We also welcome Secretary Clinton’s recognition that contractors do bring needed efficiency and flexibility to the critical work of the State Department and USAID. The QDDR’s mature acknowledgement that contractors will continue to make critical contributions to U.S. development success replaced the inaccurate anti-contractor rhetoric we saw in the leaked pre-release briefing slides. Development firms bring technical expertise and experience needed to solve very challenging problems in often hostile environments – expertise and experience federal agencies could never, and do not need to, maintain in-house. In addition, U.S. businesses are also the most effective models and implementers of international development projects to expand markets and increase economic opportunity for locals.
How effective the QDDR will be in achieving its ambitious goals depends on whether State and USAID ground their implementation in sustained, fact-based, collaborative consultations between federal agencies and their many implementing partners to clearly identify how U.S. government objectives can best be met. But even on paper, the QDDR doesn’t make changes necessary to elevate USAID’s role in making foreign assistance decisions. Additionally, the roles and responsibilities of federal agencies during a crisis, such as the earthquake in Haiti, remain undefined.
Finally, the QDDR says any over-reliance on U.S. contractors should be addressed through a default preference for using the services of other federal government agencies or host country providers. But as one non-profit development group pointed out, “[c]onsidering that some agencies have charged USAID up to 30 percent in overhead costs, it seems that contracts should not be automatically considered wasteful.” We agree. Given the austerity budgets that are forthcoming, agencies must be allowed to weigh all options to determine the most accountable and productive way to get the job done. Arbitrary restrictions on who implements projects, and other policies and practices that create barriers to participation, will prevent USAID and State from achieving sustainable development success.
