Lost in all the coverage of the State Department cable leaks is the leak of another document that could have a far greater impact on the effectiveness of future U.S. diplomacy: a set of State Department briefing slides for Congress on the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.
Although this little reported document hints at some answers to critical questions about the long-awaited strategy for how State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) will partner to support development assistance missions around the world, it also raises new questions. Perhaps most critical: why the briefing repeats tired rhetoric about the role of for-profit and non-profit development organizations assisting the government in its mission.
For example, slide 15 of the briefing describes State and USAID’s contract partnerships with U.S. firms as “patronage,” when in fact these partnerships are competitively awarded using the established federal acquisition processes. As such, they are the exact opposite of patronage.
A second misrepresentation of contractor roles appeared on slide 22, which claimed “Much of what used to be the inherent work of government has been sourced to private actors—both for-profit and non-profit.” Although State and USAID lack key technical capabilities, inherently governmental work is not being outsourced. Furthermore, a wholesale insourcing of work currently done through contracts or grants would ignore significant fiscal implications and needlessly deny the government access to the expertise and innovation available in the private sector.
The private sector provides the government access to highly technical skills that it neither could nor should endeavor to maintain in-house. Additionally, these partners are providing their expertise in challenging, often dangerous, environments that are crucial to our national security.
Considering the mission-critical skills development partners provide and the imminent release of the QDDR (expected Dec. 15), in a Dec. 6 letter PSC President and CEO Stan Soloway urged Sec. Clinton to rethink how the QDDR portrays development firms. The QDDR should inform, not prejudice, the criteria and processes Sate and USAID use to determine the selection of appropriate implementing partners, PSC said, for it is through partnership that sustainable development is achieved.
