USAID and the "counterbureaucracy"

I've been reading a perhaps overly-long but interesting article by Andrew Natsios, a former USAID Administrator, about how bureaucracy, in particular requirements to measure and report on activities, is preventing USAID from being effective at development.  Natsios describes how initiatives to promote accountability and improve government performance have led to an emphasis on more-easily measurable activities, like vaccination campaigns where you can easily count the number of people vaccinated, over less easily-measured activities that would likely have a more sustainable, long-term impact, like building the capabilities of developing nations' ministries of health so that they can vaccinate their populations on their own instead of needing our assistance.  He also shows how spending money quickly has also come to be considered good program management, (who hasn't heard criticisms of USAID or the Red Cross after big disasters like the tsunami, Katrina, or the Haiti earthquake for only having spent, say, 15% of their money allocated to the disaster within the first year?), even though, for a program to be really effective and sustainable, you need to consult with the local population and government, which can take a lot of time and means that you will spend money much more slowly.

 

Unfortunately, while Natsios points out the problems with the way USAID does things now, there don't seem to be any quick fixes.  (While USAID is fighting for its life as an independent agency, how likely is it that we'll convince the President and Congress to let us spend less time reporting results and being accountable, so that we can spend more time actually working on development problems? Fat chance, I'm thinking).  But Natsios does have some interesting recommendations, which I'm copying in below (and hoping that it's not violating copyright).  I will admit upfront that I'm only copying the recommendations I like and find interesting, and not, say, his recommendation that USAID technical staff should have to work 30 rather than 20 years to qualify for retirement, which obviously is not in my self-interest!

 

Okay, here are his (selected) recommendations:

 

Measuring foreign policy results. Critics of U.S. foreign aid have long argued that it has failed on three counts: not connecting aid with U.S. foreign policy objectives, moving too slowly to implement programs, and not producing measurable results. It may not have occurred to these critics, but these objectives are mutually exclusive demands. Political aid programs frequently do not produce good development results because they ignore both good development practice and theory; they have other objectives, which make diplomatic and military sense, but not much else. Political aid programs are not going away any time soon because they are needed to carry out U.S. foreign policy, but they ought to be judged using very different standards than traditional development aid programs.

USAID should develop, with Congressional assent, politically based evaluation standards for aid programs in war zones or where U.S. foreign policy interests are of central importance. Examples of such situations include Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, the West Bank, Gaza, and Afghanistan, where the Defense and State Department micro-manage aid programs for purposes that are unrelated or counter-productive to good development theory or practice. These are political, not development, aid programs and should be judged by whether they win hearts and minds, attract the
support of particular warlords or political factions, prop up fragile allies, or send diplomatic messages. We should stop applying development performance standards to these programs, and dispense with the polite pretense that they are development programs at all. Development professionals have little control of how they are designed, implemented, or managed. We should judge them for what they are.

 

The End of Time-based Measurements. Using program spending or disbursement rates to judge the success of aid programs, whether by OMB, GAO, OIG or Congressional oversight committees, undermines the ownership and sustainability principles that have long been central to good aid practice. The regulator's assumption that appropriated aid money is not being spent quickly enough, and thus is being poorly managed, misses the point of good development practice. This kind of work cannot be done easily or quickly, if it is to be effective.  Moreover, it requires a much longer time line to achieve results when the institutions of the recipient countries are weak or non-existent. Disbursement rates
should be used sparingly as a means for judging aid programs. The weaker or more fragile a state, the longer the time lag will be in showing program results, and allowances must be made for this lag in evaluations.

 

Aligning programs with organizational incentives. I suggest that only direct hire aid officers with advanced technical expertise should design projects and programs (now contractors design them), the length of which should be coterminous with the designing officer's assignment in the country where the project is being implemented. Moreover, that designing officer should manage the project to its conclusion. At the end of the project an impact evaluation would be done that should be included in the personnel evaluation of the responsible officer and be used to determine promotions and annual salary bonuses. These field evaluations would have to identify factors that were beyond the control of the aid officers. The officers would have to have much greater mobility to visit projects outside their imprisonment in USAID and U.S. Embassy compounds, caused by the draconian security measures required by the Embassy Security Act of 1998. This reform would align program design and management with the personnel system and incentive structure of the agency (and would require amendments to the Foreign Service Act). Other process heavy systems required by the counter-bureaucracy would have to be scaled down or eliminated wholesale.

 

A concluding thought, again courtesy of Andrew Natsios:  T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia) wrote in his celebrated memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his exploits organizing Arab desert tribes against their colonial masters—the Ottoman Turks—who had sided with Germany and the Austro-
Hungarian Empire in World War I: "Better to let them do it imperfectly than to do it perfectly yourself, for it is their country, their way and your time is short."