On May 22nd SID-Washington hosted the Chapter Event "U.S. Foreign Assistance: Steering Towards Smart Development". The panel included:

· Mary K. Bush, Chairwoman, The HELP Commission;

· Dr. Gordon Adams, Professor of U.S. Foreign Policy, American University;

· Gayle Smith, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, and moderator

· Beth Tritter, Vice-President in the Government Relations practice of The Glover Park Group.

The three speakers play significant and complementary roles in the implementation of foreign assistance reform in the political arena. They provided an update on the current transitional status of U.S. Foreign Assistance and individually contributed their thoughts on options for the future regarding the alignment of foreign assistance policy, strategy, and resources at the U.S. Department of State and USAID. The panelists delivered candid interpretations of the most recent efforts to streamline U.S. Foreign Assistance. All were in agreement that the Foreign Assistance efforts should be coordinated across all relevant governmental agencies, drawing on the full support of the Executive Branch, Congress, and the citizens of the United States who are providing tax money to fund the programs.

 

Moderator Beth Tritter opened the discussion stating that the U.S. Foreign Aid system is at a critical turning point, where all aspects of the national security arena are being reconsidered. She acknowledged that a wholesale reform of the system is necessary and must be incorporated in deed, as well as engrained in the discussions and actions of the next administration. Mary K. Bush began her presentation highlighting a growing consensus over the development community that aid must become, not only more efficient, but more effective in the medium and long term. She outlined the inefficiencies of current aid policies as contributing to a waste of time, energy, and money. These inefficiencies can be attributed to the fact that the U.S. is still trying to carry out policies which were established in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, clearly outdated and in need of a re-write. In addition, she suggested increased departmental exchanges, coordinated by a Presidential appointee. With improved coordination, she believes that conflicting advice, guidance, and requirements coming from U.S. governmental agencies will be resolved, resulting in higher success rates in the developing world.

Mary K. Bush began her presentation highlighting a growing consensus over the development community that aid must become, not only more efficient, but more effective in the medium and long term. She outlined the inefficiencies of current aid policies as contributing to a waste of time, energy, and money. These inefficiencies can be attributed to the fact that the U.S. is still trying to carry out policies which were established in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, clearly outdated and in need of a re-write. In addition, she suggested increased departmental exchanges, coordinated by a Presidential appointee. With improved coordination, she believes that conflicting advice, guidance, and requirements coming from U.S. governmental agencies will be resolved, resulting in higher success rates in the developing world.

In regards to a cabinet level department which focused solely on development, Ms. Bush felt that while it would emphasize the United State’s commitment to development, she feared that such a department would experience difficulty during harder times. She felt that the State Department needed a revamp and an infusion of development within the culture of the Department. In addition to departmental reform, she believes that changes must be implemented on the program level, particularly regarding trade and capital flows. She expressed confidence that the next elected President will bring new energy and an understanding of the importance of development at this critical juncture.

Dr. Gordon Adams focused his discussion around the idea of "rebalancing the tool-kit of American state craft". He too, expressed concern for the current systems, describing them as "under-planned, under-funded, under-staffed and mis-managed". However, while the toolkit needs to be re-adjusted at the civilian level, a much larger agenda needs to be addressed: globalization, energy, governance, transnational challenges, health, environment, crime, drugs, and rising regional/global powers. He states that it would certainly take multiple agencies and countries to tackle the elements of this agenda. Professor Adams dedicated a substantial portion of his presentation to a powerpoint of graphs representing a variety of diasporas. These diasporas were portrayed in the context of economic assistance from U.S. governmental agencies to a variety of programs, concluding that there is little coordination amongst current assistance efforts. His suggestions to resolve this lack of coordination included re-organizing current development processes (e.g. the F process), broadening knowledge of these diasporas, increasing bureaucratic capabilities to deal with coordination issues, and widening enthusiasm in Capitol Hill for reorganization. Without support from Capitol Hill, such reorganization will be nearly impossible to achieve in the near future.

Gayle Smith responded to Gordon Adams’ final thoughts by stating "I believe great ideas can absolutely happen". She then noted that the Foreign Assistance Act was created in 1961, structured around a completely different set of issues and goals than those of today. She expressed that while all of today’s pressing issues (e.g. global food crisis and climate change) will involve profound diplomatic efforts, the perspective needs to shift from diplomacy to development. For example, when preparing for diplomatic discussions with Pakistan, it is essential that we consider where we want Pakistan to be in 25 years in terms of development throughout their nation. Regarding coordination amongst different U.S. government departments, she states that we need to harmonize, rather than merge the tools within separate entities. If we were to merge all of the responsibilities under the State Department, she believes, the outcome would be less effective than coordinating each department’s capabilities towards this common "development perspective". She, too, repeatedly stated the importance of gaining acknowledgement from the President that coordination is necessary and a priority, with the hope that an AID coordinator will be designated under the next administration. She closed by saying that it is not impossible to reorganize the government, but it is critical that improvements are made to deal with the current and upcoming challenges facing us all over the next 25 years.

 

Questions and Answers:

1) Do we need to re-write the Foreign Assistance Act to effect development changes?

Gayle Smith and Mary Bush agreed that the Act is far too complicated at this point to re-write, and that dissecting the Act would only lead to lost time and energy. Instead, it is imperative that the executive branch and Congress sit down to agree on a new development agenda based on modern issues and goals.

 

2) What are your suggestions for seeing real improvements within USAID and the State Department?

All three panelists contributed to this answer with their thoughts on how to best reallocate resources within USAID and the State Department. They all touched upon focusing on staffing capabilities and recruiting the best and brightest people into critical management positions. USAID, in particular, needs to internalize more work by providing experts in each area to their projects. Gayle Smith suggested a streamline of resources.

 

3) Do you believe that a re-structured Agency would work even though the International Development Cooperation Agency (IDCA) failed and what are your feelings on the country matrix depicted at the end of the current Foreign Assistance Act?

The panel wholeheartedly agreed that the country matrix was an extremely poor way to tabulate any sort of data and provides no useful information, since countries can not be categorized in such a black and white system. Gayle Smith answered the first part if the question by re-iterating that we need to coordinate amongst the executive branch, not create a separate agency like IDCA. The coordination must be linked to the resources and budget at the White House level. Mary Bush hypothesized that IDCA probably did not have the force of agreement behind it. To implement such a concept would require the common vision of the executive branch, Congress, and the American people.