Sixteen months after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) would conduct the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), a draft summary has been presented to Congress as reported by The Washington Post, and gives us a first glimpse of changes we can expect to see at both agencies.
Statement delivered on behalf of MFAN by Co-Chairs David Beckmann and George Ingram:The leaked summary of Secretary Clinton’s QDDR shows positive movement towards a more streamlined, coherent, and coordinated approach to development by the State Department and USAID.
However, supporters of a foreign aid overhaul in the development community remain hopeful that with the completion of the State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review in the coming weeks, the administration will step up its engagement with Capitol Hill.
The different gaps in USAID’s leadership have different consequences for the Agency’s clout in Washington and for offices in the field. Within our own conversations, we’ve heard reasons for why certain AA positions are more critical to fill than others; the health community, for example, has a valid point when it says that the missing AA for Global Health means that the Agency lacks the ability to coordinate strategy with the President’s new Global Health Initiative. But does that make it the most important AA position to fill? Or should the priority be on a particular regional bureau, on Legislative and Public Affairs or on something else?
Voting in your state may not be the only ballot you cast today, after all. The Stimson Center’s The Will and the Wallet blog features a poll asking when you think the State Department’s inaugural Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) will be released.
November 1, 2010 (WASHINGTON) – This statement is delivered on behalf of the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) by Co-Chairs David Beckmann and George Ingram: We offer heartfelt congratulations to our fellow MFAN Principal and friend J. Brian Atwood for his unanimous election as Chair of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for … Continue reading MFAN Principal J. Brian Atwood Elected Chair of OECD’s Development Assistance Committee
In an article titled “Leading Through Civilian Power—Redefining American Diplomacy and Development” that will be published in the Nov/Dec edition of Foreign Affairs, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lays out the contours of the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which was launched by the State Department in the summer of 2009 and is set to be finalized and made public by the end of the year.
This week’s Saturday profile in The New York Times featured Dr. Rajiv Shah, the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. As one of the Obama administration’s most visible foreign policy players since the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Shah has spearheaded an “ambitious campaign to rebuild Usaid that will ultimately determine his success or failure in Washington.”
“Ironically, while foreign assistance has grown in importance in U.S. foreign policy over the past two decades, it has deteriorated organizationally, substantively, and procedurally. It will not take long to see how great a difference the deterioration in structure and process will have on development content. Already, the tangible erosion has had discernable, negative effects on the quality of analysis, internal discourse, and decisionmaking.”
In a recent blog post by MFAN Partner the Center for Global Development, Connie Veillette, Director of Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, emphasizes the need to highlight the positive changes that have occurred recently at USAID thanks to Administrator Rajiv Shah’s leadership.
