Foreign Aid Bill v. State's Quadrennial Review, Cont.
Remember about the conflict between that foreign aid bill I mentioned and the State Department's first major quadrennial review I wrote about earlier in the week? The arguments over it are continuing, with Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew asking for the review to be given room to breathe, and Sen. Jim Webb coming out against the legislation. The Cable reports:
"I believe that the problems in foreign assistance effectiveness are largely those of poor leadership and supervision, to be solved by the streamlining of executive branch responsibilities rather than the creation of yet another layer of infrastructure," Webb wrote.Webb was talking about the bill's proposal to create a Council on Research and Evaluation of Foreign Assistance, or CORE, that would have oversight powers over all government foreign-assistance programs, a key component according to committee staffers.
When I wrote my first post about this commenter Danielle Ellingston wisely chimed in that some of the changes in the bill might be quite important and minimally interfering:
I think the bill makes medium-scale changes where it really matters. Giving USAID the means to do its own strategic planning, making in-country USAID mission directors the coordinator for ALL USG aid in that country, beefing up research & evaluation on US foreign assistance- these are all things that matter, and they can be done without too much structural change. It might interfere with the State Department's review, but if it pushes reform in a favorable direction then that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I don't disagree with any of this. I just want to emphasize that I think the review is important. It's initiated from within, it's a wide-ranging effort, and it could be the most significant legacy--whether it succeeds or fails--of Sec. Clinton's time at State. The more the ground changes under the reviewers while they're still working, the harder it will be for them to turn out a coherent, up-to-date report. That doesn't mean that bad policies or problems should be allowed to stay frozen in amber at the department and continue to cause trouble while the review is going on. But as much as State and Congress can stay on the same page, I think that's a good thing. At some point, State is going to ask Congress to authorize funding for reorganization, or new staffing, or whatever. And Congress will want State to be in a position to implement its changes. Goodwill, and a sense that neither side is usurping the other's management efforts, may be difficult to maintain, but it's critically important.
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Government Executive Staff Correspondent Alyssa Rosenberg takes a look at news affecting the management and operations of the massive federal bureaucracy.
Tony Pryor Posted Friday, November 20, 2009 2:05 PMI would agree with both comments - that some of the changes in the Bill are in fact important, and that the QDDR can have significant impact.
What bothers me more is the broader dialogue now underway, and lack of experience about the nature of the development process among those debating the future of foreign assistance. Remarkably most of the strategy seems to emanate from State, the Hill or various Washington-based "think tanks". But remarkably little is coming from anyone with experience in trying to affect national level change.
The cultures of State and USAID, and State and DOD for that matter, are still not in sync, especially on the operational aspects of the development process. Reforms, reorganizations, restructurings and the like that seem perfectly plausible in Washington may in fact prove to be disastrous once their implications are felt at the field level.
In some regions, such as Africa, Embassy/USAID interchange is often quite constructive, with both sides working from the same song sheet. But I have been disappointed so far that many observers have assumed that development is essentially easy to accomplish, therefore concluding that difficulty experienced by the donor community and its partners represents a strong indictment of the status quo.
The heart of the problem seems to lie with a lack of experience in actually affecting field level change; much of the debate seems to be based upon an unrealistic understanding of our ability to influence and affect the lives of others. While we can help countries reform, we don't own them - change is a very complex process, and often not linear. Not all decisions made by people in other countries are decisions we would make; the fact that we may have provided strong rationale, good examples, excellent technical support, and even direct funding does NOT necessarily mean that the change that occurs is the change we want. The sooner the discussion on foreign assistance reform takes on a patina of humility and realistic expectations, the better the debate will be.