[Senate Hearing 110-843]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-843
A RELIANCE ON SMART POWER--REFORMING THE FOREIGN ASSISTANCE BUREAUCRACY
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HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
JULY 31, 2008
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
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COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE, AND THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware TED STEVENS, Alaska
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana JOHN WARNER, Virginia
Richard J. Kessler, Staff Director
Joel C. Spangenberg, Professional Staff Member
Jennifer A. Hemingway, Minority Staff Director
Jessica Nagasako, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Akaka................................................ 1
Senator Coburn............................................... 2
Senator Voinovich............................................ 3
WITNESSES
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Richard L. Greene, Deputy Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance,
U.S. Department of State....................................... 4
Leo Hindery, Jr., Former Vice Chairman, Commission on Helping to
Enhance the Livelihood of People Around the Globe (HELP)....... 18
Gordon Adams, Distinguished Fellow, Henry L. Stimson Center...... 20
Anne C. Richard, Vice President for Government Relations and
Advocacy, International Rescue Committee....................... 23
Samuel A. Worthington, President and CEO, InterAction............ 26
Gerald F. Hyman, Senior Advisor and President of the Hills
Program on Governance, Center for Strategic and International
Studies........................................................ 28
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Adams, Gordon:
Testimony.................................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 60
Greene, Richard L.:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 43
Hindery, Leo Jr.:
Testimony.................................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 54
Hyman, Gerald F.:
Testimony.................................................... 28
Prepared statement........................................... 94
Richard, Anne C.:
Testimony.................................................... 23
Prepared statement........................................... 75
Worthington, Samuel A.:
Testimony.................................................... 26
Prepared statement........................................... 81
APPENDIX
Background....................................................... 103
Speech by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, entitled ``U.S.
Global Leadership Campaign,'' July 15, 2008.................... 112
Charts........................................................... 117
``Improving US National Security: Options for Strengthening US
Foreign Operations,'' working paper by Anne C. Richard and Paul
Clayman........................................................ 120
``Proposed Major Components and Organization of a Cabinet-level
Department for Global and Human Development,'' Policy Paper
from InterAction, June 2008.................................... 144
``Revamping U.S. Foreign Assistance,'' December 10, 2007,
submitted by The HELP Commission............................... 159
Questions and Responses for the Record from:
Mr. Greene................................................... 181
Mr. Hindery.................................................. 221
Mr. Adams.................................................... 227
Ms. Richard.................................................. 231
Mr. Worthington.............................................. 237
Mr. Hyman.................................................... 248
A RELIANCE ON SMART POWER--REFORMING THE FOREIGN ASSISTANCE BUREAUCRACY
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THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2007
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, the Federal Workforce,
and the District of Columbia,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:05 p.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Daniel K.
Akaka, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Akaka, Voinovich, and Coburn.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR AKAKA
Senator Akaka. I call this hearing of the Subcommittee on
Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and
the District of Columbia to order. I want to welcome our guests
and our witnesses as well, and thank you for being here today.
This is the fourth in a series of hearings exploring the
effectiveness and efficiency of government management of our
national security. The first hearing looked at reforms of the
U.S. export control system. Subsequent hearings examined the
management and staffing of the arms control,
counterproliferation, and nonproliferation bureaucracy at the
Department of State. Today we focus on our foreign assistance
programs.
Foreign assistance includes economic development, security,
humanitarian, disaster response, health, and governance
programs. We have helped other nations through our foreign
assistance programs for over 60 years. During the late 1940s
and early 1950s, countries in Western Europe benefited from the
Marshall Plan as they rebuilt themselves after World War II.
President John F. Kennedy signed the Foreign Assistance Act
into law in 1961 in response to the American desire to help
others.
Foreign aid programs continue to be a vital part of our
foreign policy strategy. The devastation of September 11, 2001
was a demonstration that what happens in failed states can
bring terrible tragedy to Americans. Al Qaeda was free to plot
in one failed state--Afghanistan. Our national security depends
on how well we help failed states recover.
In the words of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates,
``organization charts, institutions, statistics, structures,
regulations, policies, committees, and all the rest--the
bureaucracy, if you will--are the necessary pre-condition for
effective government. But whether or not it really works
depends upon the people and their relationships.'' Policy is
not enough. Organizations and people do matter. Good policy
depends on capable organizations.
Without objection, I will introduce the entirety of
Secretary Gates' speech into the record.\1\
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\1\ The speech by Secretary Gates, entitled ``U.S. Global
Leadership Campaign,'' July 15, 2008, appears in the Appendix on page
113.
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My primary goal in this hearing is to identify possible
recommendations for improving the foreign assistance
bureaucracy. The key components I ask our witnesses to address
in their remarks are the human capital, management,
coordination, and structural challenges that reduce the
effectiveness and efficiency of U.S. foreign assistance.
We need to ensure that we have an organization with the
capacity to support the foreign assistance policies of this
Administration and the next.
In 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a
new direction for U.S. foreign assistance in order to align
U.S. foreign assistance programs with the Administration's
foreign policy goals. Secretary Rice announced the creation of
a new Deputy Secretary level position, the Director of Foreign
Assistance, who would also serve at the same time as USAID's
Administrator, although this has not been established in
statute.
This new foreign assistance bureaucracy confronts a number
of challenges. An overview of some of the core problems--and
there are three charts\2\--can be seen in these charts: The
steep decrease in USAID Foreign Service Officer staffing from
1967 until today; the fragmentation of foreign assistance among
many agencies and programs; and the amount of development
assistance not under the direct control of the Director of
Foreign Assistance.
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\2\ Charts referred to appear in the Appendix beginning on page
117.
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The challenges are clear. We need to design a national
strategy for foreign assistance with a clear mission and the
means to accomplish it; streamline aid programs to ensure
effectiveness and efficiency; simplify foreign assistance since
there are too many programs, in too many departments, chasing
too few dollars; reduce the role of the Department of Defense
in foreign assistance as their involvement may come at a cost
of supporting their own core mission; and finally, we need to
improve USAID's human capital because its current staffing and
training levels do not support its worldwide requirements
adequately.
Clarifying the key foreign assistance organizational and
human capital issues will help the next Administration better
focus its efforts and further strengthen U.S. national
security. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on these
matters.
May I now call on Senator Coburn for any statement he may
have.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN
Senator Coburn. I will not make an opening statement. I
have a history of being very interested in the subject on how
we carry out our USAID projects as well as the people involved
with it, and I look forward to hearing our witnesses testify,
and I thank you for the hearing.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. So glad you are here.
Senator Voinovich.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Senator Akaka. We appreciate
your convening today's hearing to examine our foreign
assistance structure.
As a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I
have had the opportunity to meet regularly with international
leaders to advance our public diplomacy. As the United States
seeks to advance its interests and promote global stability,
the delivery of foreign assistance in a timely and consistent
manner is crucial to our efforts to support democracy abroad.
Our current framework limits the return on our investment.
Many would be surprised to learn that our foreign assistance
structure spans 26 agencies and offices. The Department of
State and the U.S. Agency for International Development control
just over half of our development assistance and in 2008 will
provide more than $24 billion to 155 countries. Without an
orchestra leader to direct our development program and
integrate existing agency silos, we limit our collective
ability to strengthen the third pillar of our National Security
Strategy.
Now, critics have described our current aid structure as
fractious, cumbersome, and rigid, a relic of the Cold War.
While the creation of the F Bureau was well intended, most
agree further reform is necessary. It seems to me that our
development goals could be more easily accomplished if all
partners involved sat down and crafted a comprehensive foreign
assistance strategy.
Compounding an inefficient structure is a lack of an
adequate number of trained personnel to administer our foreign
aid structure. The forthcoming report by the American Academy
of Diplomacy, which I am proud to be part of, will show that
the USAID currently has 2,200 personnel who administer more
than $8 billion annually in development and other assistance
following cumulative staff reductions of nearly 40 percent
during the last two decades. While the average Federal
contracting officer oversees an estimated $10 million in
contracts, the average USAID contracting officer is responsible
for approximately $57 million.
Our foreign aid is intended to ensure stability and
prosperity overseas. We also hope that our investment will help
us to win the hearts and minds of those we are trying to help.
In 2007, the program on internal policy attitudes reported that
20 of the 26 countries, including many who receive millions of
dollars of U.S. foreign assistance, felt the United States was
having a negative influence on the world.
Unfortunately, these numbers are the lowest ever recorded.
While Secretary Rice is to be commended for her
transformational diplomacy and initiative, it is clear that we
have got to do more. Secretary Gates also encouraged us earlier
this month to strengthen our civilian institutions of diplomacy
and development.
I hope today's hearing will result in a foreign assistance
structure that is well managed, supported by highly skilled
individuals committed to public service, and funded in a manner
that allows us to use our foreign policy tools more effectively
to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing world.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Senator Voinovich.
I welcome our first witness to the Subcommittee today,
Richard Greene, Deputy Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance,
Department of State.
It is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear in all
witnesses, and I would ask you to please rise and raise your
right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are
about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Greene. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. Let it be noted in the
record that the witness responded in the affirmative.
Before we start, I want you to know that your full
statement will be made part of the record. I would also like to
remind you to keep your remarks brief given the number of
people testifying this afternoon.
So, Mr. Greene, will you please proceed with your
statement?
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD L. GREENE,\1\ DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF U.S.
FOREIGN ASSISTANCE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Voinovich, and
Senator Coburn.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Greene appears in the Appendix on
page 43.
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First, I would like to point out the irony of talking about
reforming the foreign assistance bureaucracy, and both the
Chairman and the Ranking Member included quotes by Secretary
Gates in their opening statements, and I have a quote by
Secretary Gates in my opening statement. I think it is a sign
of the times.
The degree of turmoil and poverty in the world poses both
challenges and opportunities for our foreign assistance
programs. Our goal of improving lives around the world is
consistent with our national security goal of making the world
a more secure place. By addressing the long-term conditions
that lead to despair and instability, development takes its
place alongside diplomacy and defense as key components of our
National Security Strategy. Today we must ensure that each of
our major foreign policy tools works together to achieve
results that promote our development, humanitarian, and
national security goals all around the world.
Under Secretary Rice's leadership, we have invested
considerable effort to begin to improve the coherence and
effectiveness of our foreign assistance architecture. Our
overall approach has many features. These include adequate
funding levels; the creation of a new structure to coordinate
USG strategic and operational planning, integrated budget
formulation and execution; a bigger and better trained and
supported workforce--we are trying to turn that trend around; a
focus on country needs in our planning and budgeting; better
expanded civilian-military coordination and delivery; expanded
public-private partnerships; and a new rapid response capacity
through the Civilian Response Corps. These are all works in
progress, and in my opening testimony, I would like to focus on
just three components.
First, regarding funding levels, there are numerous recent
examples where we, the Administration, you, the Congress, as
well as our stakeholders have worked closely together to
provide the development funding commensurate with the
challenges and opportunities that exist around the world.
Consequently, the U.S. Government has nearly tripled Official
Development Assistance since 2001. Of course, the signature
program of that growth is PEPFAR, and yesterday the President
signed into law a bill reauthorizing a second-year program with
very strong support from the members of this panel that we are
most appreciative of.
We have also significantly increased our investments in
other key development areas, such as health, education,
economic growth, and governance. And I think both Congress and
the Administration can take pride in the significant resources
and the focus on results that we have provided to important
programs that are transforming lives and making our world more
secure.
Second, we are reforming the foreign assistance planning
and allocation process. As you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, 2
years ago, Secretary Rice reviewed our current structure and
frankly, she did not like what she saw. She saw fragmentation,
duplication, no clear lines of authority, inadequate data
transparency, and she had a hard time getting any answers to
any basic management questions about what we are spending,
where we are spending it, and what are the purposes.
Consequently, Secretary Rice established the position of
Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, and you have talked about
what that position is all about.
To carry out its mission, the new organization has
developed several new, and I think important, tools. These
include a Foreign Assistance Framework as an organizational
tool to describe a broad range of foreign assistance programs,
a set of common definitions, standard indicators, and country-
level operational plans that describe how resources are being
used and how results will be measured.
The office is also focused on integrating State and USAID
foreign assistance efforts and developing a country-specific
focus, and for the first time, the Administration has submitted
an official foreign assistance budget that fully integrates
State and USAID requests for individual countries and program
areas.
We are also working to incorporate non-State and USAID
foreign assistance programs, a subject of your chart on the far
right. For example, we are piloting a strategic planning
process where stakeholders from across the U.S. Government are
working in Washington and in the field to develop U.S.
Government-wide country-specific foreign assistance strategies.
Finally, I want to mention operational support. Successful
foreign assistance reform depends on our ability to rebuild
USAID's core development capacity. My Secretary of Defense
quote is where he said, I think about a month ago, ``It has
become clear that America's civilian institutions of diplomacy
and development have been chronically undermanned and
underfunded for far too long--relative to what we traditionally
spend on the military, and more importantly, relative to the
responsibilities and challenges our Nation has around the
world.'' Simply put, we need more better trained and supported
people to work in new ways to support the achievement of U.S.
Government development objectives. Staffing has not grown
commensurate with the tremendous growth in programs and funding
levels and challenges and degree of operational complexity.
USAID's workforce and infrastructure must keep pace.
Consequently, Administrator Henrietta Fore launched a 3-
year plan to double USAID's Foreign Service capacity and
significantly ramp up systems and training resources.
Administrator Fore calls this program the ``Development
Leadership Initiative.''
So where does this leave us? I think this is all clearly a
work in progress. It is fair to say that the initial
implementation of the reform effort had some serious problems,
but I think it is also fair to say that we have seen
significant improvements in many of the key areas of concern.
I think we now have a greater development focus and sense
of U.S. Government unity about how, why, and what we are trying
to accomplish in our foreign policy and our foreign assistance
goals. And while we are still in the formative days of our
reform effort, we have made significant progress in bringing
greater U.S. Government coherence to what we are trying to
accomplish in foreign assistance. We have also taken the first
steps to reinvigorate USAID's development corps. I think what
is also important is to talk about what we need to do next. We
collectively need to do more to realize our goal of
significantly improving foreign assistance cohesiveness. We
need greater funding flexibility. We need programs that are
demand-driven and not ones that are dictated by the type of
funding available.
We need to do a better job of giving country experts the
ability to shape and implement development strategies. We need
to recruit and retain a robust workforce, with strong
operational and technical skills. We need to further streamline
our internal planning and allocation processes. We need to
fully implement a whole government approach that achieves
better coordination of U.S. Government foreign assistance
programs. And to be successful, we need the active engagement
of Congress, public and private partners, and the international
community.
So, in closing, I think the one word that captures where we
are in our efforts to help achieve what we are talking about
here is ``more.'' In the assistance world, there are more
issues to consider; there is more complexity; there is more
aggregate resources; there is more security concerns; there is
more information about what works and what is important; there
is more understanding of the impact of not coordinating
defense, development, and diplomacy; there is more
international focus on improving our collective foreign
assistance performance. But most importantly, there is also
more promise and more potential for achieving long-term
sustainable development goals around the world. Progress can
only be made if we have a sense of shared community goals and
efforts. And I think there are clear signs that we are heading
in that direction, and I salute the members of today's second
panel for their leadership role on that front. Modernizing
foreign assistance is necessary, it is urgent, and it is
essential to the achievement of essential foreign policy and
national security objectives.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for your testimony, Mr.
Greene. We will have 7 minutes of questions each here on the
first round.
Mr. Greene, you note that our foreign assistance was
stovepiped into numerous accounts overseen by a multitude of
offices, each with different standards of measurement and
different ways of judging success or failure, and that this
fragmentation made it difficult to plan coherently and could
lead to conflicting or redundant efforts. I thank you for this
honest assessment. You also state that in the year 2006,
Secretary Rice launched an effort to improve the coherence and
effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance, and let me call your
attention again to these charts that we have here on my right.
It does not look like much progress has been made when you look
at the charts.\1\
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\1\ The charts referred to appear in the Appendix beginning on page
117.
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Can you tell us what new steps the Administration is
planning to take to improve coherence and effectiveness?
Mr. Greene. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me be blunt. We
have not done anything to simplify, collectively, the
Administration and the Congress of the United States has not
done anything to simplify the account structure that exists.
And what the Secretary's initiative focused on was what we
could do administratively to bring greater coherence.
So what we are trying to do is to bring together State and
USAID planning efforts. What we are trying to do is develop
tools that describe in much greater detail what we do, and how
we do it. What we are trying to do is to develop an attitude
that gets around the stovepipes, that has State and USAID
employees working together to plan, to develop, to formulate,
to execute programs. And what we have also developed is a core
set of improved tools in terms of developing foreign assistance
policy that will be significant enhancements over what we have
had. And you mentioned some transition and legacy issues that I
think will be a great aid to whoever comes in and manages these
programs in the next Administration.
So our focus has been on what we can do without
legislation, and what we can do without legislation is bringing
out stronger State/USAID coherence.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, Mr. Worthington of InterAction
argues that the F Bureau has been measuring performance of
foreign assistance programs by outputs rather than impact or
outcomes. Do you agree with him?
Mr. Greene. Mr. Worthington is a fine and astute
individual. I think it is a very--everything about foreign
assistance is complex, and arguably, foreign assistance
programs present the most complex public policy challenges
there are. If you look at the number of programs, you look at
the number of implementing partners, you look at the types of
programs, you look at legislation, you look at countries, you
look at security objectives, and if you laid all that out in a
matrix, I would argue it would be probably the most complex
matrix there is in any public policy arena. And I think it is a
combination of factors.
Of course, we look at outputs. We are output oriented. And,
Senator Voinovich I think has worked hard in a lot of his other
committees on this issue. One of the biggest challenges is to
really usable performance measures that you would really use to
manage programs by, that you would really use to make funding
and allocation and staffing decisions, and we are working on
that. It is a work in progress, and I would echo Mr.
Worthington's point that it is very important to make continued
progress on that.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, right now there are over 20 U.S.
agencies and over 50 programs conducting foreign aid. In
Afghanistan alone, there are eight different U.S. Government
agencies and many private contractors. Using Afghanistan as an
example, what is being done there to develop a coherent
strategy?
Mr. Greene. What we have in Afghanistan is, on the foreign
assistance side, what we call our Country Operating Plan for
Afghanistan that takes all of the foreign assistance resources
available--to be clear here, I do not want to make this out to
more than it is--for State and USAID, arrays it and allocates
it by program area down to a pretty detailed level in terms of
different types of programs, different types of delivery
mechanisms, who the implementing partners are and what the
expected results are. So we have a much greater degree of
coherence in terms of allocating foreign assistance funds than
I think we have had before.
Now, in Afghanistan and in other post-conflict states, of
course, there are huge overlaying security concerns, and there
are huge overlaying political concerns that drive that
relationship as well.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, do you believe it would make
sense to consolidate most of our foreign aid programs under
State?
Mr. Greene. I do. Full stop.
Senator Akaka. If over 40 percent of all foreign aid is
controlled by agencies outside of the State Department, how
does State ensure that other departments are not undermining
its policies?
Mr. Greene. It is a major challenge for us now, again, to
be blunt. And the way we do it is we rely heavily on the
leadership by our chiefs of mission in the field. We rely
heavily on the leadership of our USAID mission directors who
are assistance leaders in almost every mission where they are
at around the world. And what we are trying to do is to develop
U.S. Government-wide assistance strategies that incorporate the
resources of agencies that are not under the authority of the
Secretary of State.
Now, we do not have the authority to make other agencies
participate, and we are piloting it in 10 countries around the
world. We will see how it works. We will see if we are able to
achieve greater coherence without additional authorities. It
basically will happen with the cooperation of others,
recognizing what is at stake here, or it will not happen at
all, sir.
Senator Akaka. Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Greene, our dependence on continuing resolutions
impacts the agencies charged with the delivering of foreign
assistance, and recipient nations rely on long-term guaranteed
funding to sustain economic growth. At my request, the
Congressional Research Service prepared a soon-to-be-released
report on the impacts of continuing resolutions on agency
operations. We complain about what various departments and
agencies are doing, but the fact of the matter is that we
contribute to it with the continuing resolution, omnibus bills
that we pass. But the report highlights a 138-day delay in
increased funding for the President's Malaria Initiative for
fiscal year 2007, and USAID noted, ``Because of a shorter time
frame before the end of the fiscal year, planning and
implementation were difficult and hurried in terms of the
distribution of funds and in developing contracts for
implementing various approaches in malaria control.''
Could you just spend a little time telling us how the way
we do things around here is impacting your ability to deliver
what we want you to deliver? And, second of all, in your
opinion, does it add to the cost because of the way we are
operating in terms of our appropriations?
Mr. Greene. I appreciate the question, Senator. It clearly
adds to the cost of how we operate, and more importantly, adds
to planning uncertainty about funding flows, about how to
proceed.
What is important is sustaining commitment, and you do not
get results on the programs we are talking about here unless
you are engaged in a sustained way over a number of years. You
do not make development progress in a number of months. You
make it with sustained focus and attention over a number of
years. And if we go through this process each year where we are
under long-term CRs, we get the appropriations late in the
year, the implementing partners who we rely on, who do heroic
work in the field and every place around the world, cannot
plan, they cannot judge, they cannot hire people, they cannot
put projects into place. There is a huge operating tax
associated with that, and we are certainly worse off because of
that, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Also, it is my understanding that so
often many of these projects that you undertake are earmarked.
Would you like to comment on that?
Mr. Greene. Sir, I think we are not at a good place in
terms of implementing a balanced foreign assistance program in
the United States, carefully balanced between congressional
priorities, Administration priorities, and the needs and views
of people on the ground that are actually implementing the
programs. And in order to get that into better balance, my
opinion is that we need a lot more flexibility in terms of
funding categories, in terms of timing, in terms of the
duration of projects as well. And I think because of what you
are describing, sir, in many cases we end up with programs that
do not adequately balance our key objectives and do not really
reflect what the experts on the ground think are necessary to
make development progress. Thank you.
Senator Voinovich. In two area, we are responsible for
making it more difficult for you to do the job we are asking
you to do.
Mr. Greene, the Commission on Smart Power that was headed
up by Joe Nye and Dick Armitage describes how many of our
traditional elements of soft power, such as public engagement
and diplomacy, have been neglected and fallen into disrepair,
and the report urges the State Department to give greater
attention to an integrated foreign assistance program driven by
strategic considerations.
I would like to know how is the Department meeting this
goal. And then the other question is, Does the Department's
current framework support the goal? And I guess last, but not
least, do you believe there would be a benefit to appointing
additional senior officials to oversee this whole structure
that we have or appoint someone that would be kind of the
orchestra leader that would tie all of this together and make
it happen and give them enough power so that they could get
people to do what they are supposed to do? We keep running into
situations where, even in the area of enforcement of our
intellectual property, you have about a dozen agencies, and we
have been trying to get them together. And the President was
able to go along with an orchestra leader, and a guy named
Christian Israel is putting it all together.
But it seems that you have to have somebody that has the
clout to try to make this happen, and I would like your
response to that.
Mr. Greene. The two whose responsibility it is to make it
happen are Secretary Rice and USAID Administrator Henrietta
Fore. Now, clearly neither of them have authorities over
foreign assistance controlled by non-State/USAID agencies. That
is a significant chunk, and it shows in your chart up there. I
think the foreign assistance programs of the United States
could be more effectively developed, implemented, and
monitored, if more of the foreign assistance funding was under
that leadership structure.
Your second question, sir, was on integration. I think the
effort that we have launched is a good first step. Again, this
is a work in progress, but I think it is a good first step,
sir.
Senator Voinovich. In other words, you put a team together
and this is the recommendation about how to get it done? Or are
you just dealing with it because that is about the only way you
can deal with it? Has this been taken up, for example, to talk
to OMB about how that could be better?
Mr. Greene. We made a conscious decision in terms of
developing this reform effort that we could achieve the most
progress the fastest if we did what we could do
administratively as opposed to seeking new authorities. And so
we did what we could do administratively, which is to basically
try to get greater State/USAID coherence. And I think we have
made pretty good progress on that. But as all of you point out,
and as the chart points out, there is a whole other world out
there of non-State, non-USAID foreign assistance, and that
coordination and improved coherence relies on interagency
cooperation.
Senator Voinovich. Interpersonal skills between the people
involved.
Mr. Greene. Yes, sir. This is a very strong leadership-
dependent operation, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. Senator Coburn.
Senator Coburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I happen to think PEPFAR and Millennium Challenge
Corporation grants, the work that is done there is probably by
far some of the most effective work we do. And my observation
from that is that because they have outcome requirements, they
have metrics, they are measured. We know what we are trying to
achieve. We know how to measure it, and therefore, we can
assess it. And I am very glad to hear of some of the management
changes.
Does every program in American foreign assistance have an
outcome goal?
Mr. Greene. There are outcome goals, Senator, for every
program. Now, I think it is also fair to say that in many cases
they are not as effective, not as clear, not as easy to measure
as PEPFAR and malaria when you are talking about capacity
building in terms of a government ministry when you are talking
about democracy programs, when you are talking about economic
growth, and when you are talking about governance. The
challenge of coming up with effective performance indicators is
a bigger challenge, sir.
Senator Coburn. It certainly is, but the management of all
those programs is made much more simple if, in fact, you spend
the time on the front end trying to get those performance
indicators. And one of the things that I want to make sure we
do--and I think it will help the State Department plus
everybody else--is we ought to have a metric on what we are
doing. And we just really do not in the State Department. In a
large number of areas, not only do we not have clear outcome
goals, we do not have metrics to measure whether or not we are
achieving those goals.
So one of the things that I am hopeful for is--it is really
different in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those are combat areas. And
the judgment that we should make on performance should be
different in those areas than it is in others. But to
highlight, the funds have been highly effective, whereas in
many areas, USAID, because of the limitations we place on our
USAID folks, they do not have the range of possibility that a
local commander has in terms of spending money. I mean, we
know--and part of that is security, and I grant that we have to
discount a lot of that. But I think one of the important
things--and I cannot stress to you enough, and I am going to be
around here a little while longer--is we have got to have
programs that are outcome driven not demand driven. And they
have got to have metrics, and that is going to be one of the
things. And I would have a little bit of disagreement with
Senator Voinovich on CRs. A CR, you know what is coming. You
just do not know what the increase is in what is coming because
the CR is set at the level of the year before. So we do not
know what the increases will be, but there should be no reason
that a CR would slow us down for anything because the CR is a
continuing appropriation based on the levels that we have been
running.
And so while we do handicap you--and I agree, we should be
getting our work done on time--the handicap is on increases. It
is not on the funds that are running because we are translating
those through on a month-by-month basis at the same level at
which they were before.
If we had metrics, let's say we spent the extra time to
really work to try to get an outcome, whether it be crop
production or whatever it is, whether working with Agriculture
or U.S. Fish and Wildlife or the Corps of Engineers, if we
could spend the time up front on that, would it not make sense
that we would probably be more effective if we had common
outcome goals with all those other agencies where you do not
have direct command and control over? And is there any way to
set that up when we implement foreign policy before we invite
the Corps of Engineers in, before we invite the U.S. Department
of Agriculture in and saying here is our goal? Now, here is the
goal, here is what we want to see, and how do we get there and
how do we measure it? That is my first question.
The second thing is could we not help you more effectively
if we had more oversight hearings on what is happening so that
we get a better understanding in Congress of the tools that we
need to give you that you may not have, and also holding you
accountable to meet those outcome measures?
Mr. Greene. I appreciate your comments, Senator, and more
importantly, many people that I work with are in total
agreement with you on metrics. Metrics are a greatly
underappreciated facet of any program management exercise, I
think anywhere in the U.S. Government. We have started down the
path of assigning metrics to various program areas and
elements. Some of them work, some of them do not. And we take
your call very seriously to pay more attention and invest more
time to that up front.
I think our efforts at getting to coherency and improving
efficiency of our programs would be improved if we did what you
are talking about in terms of having common metrics and common
indicators for every foreign assistance program no matter where
they were in the government.
We are taking steps in that direction in terms of just
initially trying to capture data and trying to describe what
they do with our 10 pilot programs on overall country
assistance strategies and there will be metrics components or
performance components to that. And so I am in strong agreement
with you, sir.
Now, regarding oversight hearings, I have mixed emotions on
more oversight hearings, but certainly more substantive
discussions about what we do and how we do it and the
challenges we face are welcomed. We would love to do that.
Senator Coburn. Yes. We had all the hearings on a lot of
the waste associated at USAID in Afghanistan, and some of it
could not be helped. I understand that. But the fact is that
even after the hearings, we went back and hired the same
contractors who did not do a good job the first time. And
sometimes that is the only contractor we had. But we ought to
be about trying to change those things rather than to go in the
manner that we have gone.
You have a tough job, especially in the conflict areas, and
it is hard to be too critical of you in that, especially when
there is a security component to it. So I will save my
criticisms for that. But I am going to be watching for outcomes
in all these programs, and I am going to be looking for
metrics. And I would just say one other thing. We cannot ask
our State Department to have metrics and be accountable when we
refuse as a Congress to hold the United Nations accountable
with $5.4 billion of our money. This Senate passed 99-0 that
the United Nations funding ought to be based on the fact that
they are transparent and accountable to us with our money, and
it was taken out in conference. We are going to get a vote on
that every year I am here, and there is no way we can hold you
accountable when we send money to another agency and turn a
blind eye about how whether they are accountable or not.
With that, I would yield back.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Senator Coburn.
Mr. Greene, according to the charts again, as this middle
chart shows, there has been a marked decrease in USAID Foreign
Service officers from 1967 to 2008. In his testimony, Dr. Adams
of the Henry L. Stimson Center states that USAID has hired more
than 1,200 personal services contractors. He states that USAID
has become largely a contract management agency with programs
being implemented by a growing number of outside
contractors.\1\
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\1\ The chart referred to appears in the Appendix on page 119.
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Do you agree with this assessment?
Mr. Greene. Mr. Chairman, I have a long tradition of never
disagreeing with someone who is sitting right behind me. You
just never know.
Dr. Adams is an expert in this area. Dr. Adams has been
very involved with these issues for a number of years, and I
agree with his assessment.
Now, I think what is important is to talk a little bit
about what we are doing. One, we--meaning under Administrator
Henrietta Fore's leadership--recognize that this is a serious
problem and that we need to rebuild USAID's core capacity.
Two, Administrator Henrietta Fore has launched the
Development Leadership Initiative where her objective is to
double the size of USAID's Foreign Service Corps over 3 years,
and fiscal year 2009 is year one. The Congress has been very
supportive of that objective and provided additional funding in
the supplemental in the FY 2007 bridge supplemental. And the
initial marks of our appropriation bills in the House and the
Senate also provided additional funding. So I think we are,
with your very strong support, taking a good step to try to
reverse that trend, and it is a worrying trend.
I also think there is no interest in going back to the 1967
levels when the aforementioned Richard Armitage was in Vietnam.
But we certainly need to significantly increase what we have
now.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, I was recently informed by an
organization called Inside NGOs that USAID's staff spends up to
75 percent of their time on pre-award contract work, such as
defining technical requirements, writing scopes of work, and
evaluating proposals. Less than 25 percent is spent monitoring
performance and administering the awards. Now, this suggests
that accountability may be more of an afterthought rather than
a management priority.
Do you agree with Inside NGOs' characterization of the
situation? If not, what percentage of time is spent on pre-
award work versus performance monitoring?
[The information provided for the record follows:]
INFORMATION PROVIDED FOR THE RECORD FROM MR. GREENE
When looking at USAID staff across the board, warranted contracting
and agreement officers and contract specialists make up less than 10
percent of USAID's workforce. These professionals are far outnumbered
by Cognizant Technical Officers (CTOs) and other Project Specialists
who are nearly fully devoted to program implementation, monitoring and
evaluation.
If Inside NGO was referring only to USAID contracting and agreement
officers and contract specialists, no analysis has been done regarding
the percentage of time spent on pre-award actions and post-award
performance monitoring and administration. It is our opinion, however,
that the 75 to 25 percent ratio is fairly accurate with regard to
contracting officers and specialists. Following award, the CTOs--also
procurement professionals according to Office of Federal Procurement
Policy's definition, but not warranted--act as the contracting and
agreement officers' representative for the purposes of program
implementation, performance monitoring and evaluation and spend a
greater percentage of their time on administration and oversight. In
addition, within the USAID Office of Acquisition and Assistance, there
is an Evaluation Division and a Contract Audit and Support Division
which carry out many contract administration duties such as financial
reviews, claims, training, advisory reports, the suspension/disbarment
of contractors, and contract performance reporting. Therefore, USAID is
strongly committed to accountability as a priority.
Ideally, the warranted contracting and agreement officers would
play a larger role in post-award activities than they are currently
able to. This remains a goal of USAID. Unfortunately, there is a
chronic shortage of contracting and agreement officers across the
Federal Government and this is true at USAID as well. For example,
USAID currently has fewer staff in the 1102 (Contract Specialist) back-
stop than it did 10 years ago, yet obligations have tripled. Given more
human and financial resources, USAID would be able to focus a greater
percentage of contracting and agreement officers' time on post-award
activities and provide for even greater accountability on the part of
implementing partners, improved tracking of contract performance,
improved transparency through better reporting data, and greater
stewardship over resources. We hope to be able to sustain the
significant recruitment effort we recently initiated to bring more
Civil Service and Foreign Service procurement officers into USAID.
Mr. Greene. Mr. Chairman, I do not know what the specific
numbers are. If there are specific numbers, we will get back to
you. Just my instinct is that in terms of order of magnitude,
it is probably not that far off. And, again, more importantly,
taking the tone of your remarks on every issue so far, it is
what are we doing to reverse that? And our main tool to reverse
that is to ramp up USAID hiring in both operational and
technical issues. That is the only way we are going to be able
to reverse what is a troubling trend, sir.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, Dr. Adams in his testimony
argues that Foreign Service officers should be encouraged to
hold a development or foreign assistance post in their careers.
Do you agree with this and agree that this would be useful? And
if so, is State doing anything to encourage this?
Mr. Greene. I think it would be very useful, sir, and I
think you are seeing a sea culture change in terms of the
experiences that Foreign Service officers have at the State
Department. You look at the number of people who have served in
Iraq, who have served in Afghanistan, who have served in
Bosnia, and the large number of our people who have been in
post-conflict situations, and who have been part of managing,
and directing assistance programs. And so the comfort level
with assistance programs has increased. The linkage and knowing
the relationship between assistance programs and achieving our
overall goals has increased. And it is a trend that is going to
keep on keeping on, as we say, and we will do everything
possible to encourage it, sir.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, GAO reported that Human
Resources Bureau officials did not attend meetings in which
foreign assistance budget decisions were made that could
potentially impact human capital requirements. Do you agree
that this happened in the past? And what has changed since this
report was issued in September 2007?
Mr. Greene. Sir, there is a State Department equivalent of
USAID's Development Leadership Initiative. At this point it
does not have an eye-catching title like Development Leadership
Initiative, but Secretary Rice and the leader of this effort,
Under Secretary Kennedy, are also trying to significantly ramp
up State's core technical operational staffing. And a part of
this effort is to increase the number of people and increase
the competency of State Department Foreign Service officers who
have oversight, who manage, and who support foreign assistance
programs.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Greene, over the last few years, there
has been a process underway to subordinate USAID to the State
Department. Meanwhile, some of our allies abroad have been
undertaking efforts to create separate agencies to direct their
foreign assistance agenda. The United Kingdom's Department for
International Development stands out as one example.
In your opinion, is the British development department
effective?
Mr. Greene. I think our colleagues at the Department for
International Development (DfID) are effective. I would also
note that we just had a very long session with our colleagues
at DfID who wanted to know what we do in the Foreign Assistance
Bureau of the State Department and how we do it and what we are
doing to try to gain greater coherence. And so they were
looking to learn some of the tools from us to apply back to
their own situation.
Senator Akaka. Well, thank you very much for your
responses.
Senator Voinovich.
Senator Voinovich. This is a difficult one to answer, and
in my opening statement, I said that the program on
international policy attitudes reported that 20 of the 26
countries, including many who receive millions of dollars of
foreign assistance, felt the United States was having a
negative influence on the world. Real low numbers. Any
explanation why you think that is the case? Has it got to do
with the Iraq War or Abu Ghraib?
Mr. Greene. I think there are some pretty well-documented,
and discussed reasons why that could be true, sir. But I also
think that there have been some recent polling information that
shows that trend starting to turn around a little bit. And,
again, I think what is important is what are we doing to try to
turn around that trend. And, I think we are doing it, sir.
Senator Voinovich. If there was one or two things that you
would recommend to the next President that he do to kind of
change this as rapidly as possible, what would you suggest?
Mr. Greene. Sir, are you talking about overall attitudes or
are you talking about----
Senator Voinovich. Yes, overall attitudes. I mean, this is
all a part of our public diplomacy. It is part of our national
security. It should be.
Mr. Greene. I think we do extraordinary work around the
world. We do extraordinary work around the world that brings
great daily benefit to millions of people around the world. We
do it in conjunction with countries, with partners, with
organizations. And I do not think we do the greatest job
possible of talking about how we do it, why we do it, and the
results we achieve. And I just think we need to significantly
improve telling the story of what this country does and what
this country helps accomplish around the world on a daily
basis, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Well, it is interesting. We are known
for our great public relations, the fabulous firms that
represent corporations and so forth that are in that business.
You think that we need to figure out how to do this better, to
communicate who we are and what we want to do and what we have
done, and that we do care about other people?
Mr. Greene. Yes, sir, and to do it in a sustained, engaged
way using communication styles and techniques that are more in
tune with the changing communication styles and techniques that
are out there today. Frankly, I think we are just starting to
wake up to that potential and that methodological change that
is necessary.
Senator Voinovich. Do you have any people in your shop that
are working on that?
Mr. Greene. Those are primarily in the Under Secretary for
Public Diplomacy's shop, Mr. Glassman, and he is leading the
charge on that, sir. What we constantly get----
Senator Voinovich. How much coordination is there between
you guys and Glassman's operation?
Mr. Greene. What Glassman is always looking for two things:
One are success stories, give us information, feed us all these
success stories that your people say you are doing so that we
can get them out to our communicators all over the world. Paint
the picture, give us the information. So he is looking for
success stories, and he is looking for resources to get the
core capacity to deliver those success stories in an integrated
way, looking for much more forward presence in terms of public
diplomacy strategy as well, sir.
Senator Voinovich. Shifting the questions to Senator
Coburn, as a mayor and governor, I used to say, if you cannot
measure it, do not do it. And one of the problems that we
have--Senator Akaka and I have--we try to get strategic plans
on how people are going to get off the high-risk list. You are
setting up some kind of metrics. When you do this, do you ever
sit down with the General Accounting Office to talk to them
about it? Because so often what ends up happening is they come
in and look over your shoulder, and then they come back with
reports that program challenges remain. Is there any work that
is being done in that area?
Mr. Greene. Right now we are privileged to have a General
Accounting group looking at many different aspects of our
operation, and my understanding--I have not been in these
conversations myself, but my understanding is that we have had
discussions on performance measures and monitoring. I will find
out exactly what----
[The information provided for the record follows:]
INFORMATION PROVIDED FOR THE RECORD FROM MR. GREENE
We have discussions with the GAO on a range of foreign assistance
related issues, including performance metrics. The current GAO study is
however not specificallly focused on metrics.
Senator Voinovich. It would really be good to do that
because we have had situations, haven't we, Senator Akaka,
where they come before us and claim they are not being measured
the same way or that we do not agree with the definition and we
are still trying to get some feedback on several of those
areas.
The last thing I would like to mention to you is that you
have recently started this effort, and we are going to have a
new Administration. I mentioned the American Academy of
Diplomacy, you have the Commission on Smart Power, and I think
there is one other group that is going to come back. There is a
big coming together of thought on what we ought to do to go
forward. And I would really appreciate it if, as these reports
come out--in fact, I am going to have my staff look at them,
and I am going to look at them, to see what the common threads
are. And you have been there, and it would be interesting to
know before you tip your hat what you think about those reports
and whether you think that they are suggesting the right
things. I would be very interested--and I am sure Senator Akaka
would--in terms of your thoughts about that because we are
going to have a new day in this area.
And we had the Aspen Institute breakfast this morning. We
had an adviser to the Secretary on terrorism, and his opinion
was that there are a whole lot of things that we ought to be
doing differently today. And then I think, Senator Akaka, you
are on the Armed Services Committee. There is only so much
money to go around. I think the State Department's budget
proposal is $36 billion.
Mr. Greene. Yes, sir. That includes assistance and
operations.
Senator Voinovich. Yes, $36 billion, and I think the
defense budget is $683 billion, something like that. And I know
this is probably not something good to suggest, but it seems to
me that we should be allocating our dollars differently than we
are today, that the enemy is different than it was before the
Cold War. We have a group that is out that does not fly under
any flag, and we need to be--as Joe Nye says, we need to have
smart power and figure it out. And I am hoping that those of
you that are close to this really get out and start beating the
drum for the fact that we need to reallocate our resources and
put them in the areas where we are going to get a much better
return on our investment.
Senator Akaka, one of the things that drives me crazy
around here is that--they call it the ``military-industrial''--
Eisenhower talked about it, and it is also the congressional
thing that we need to be concerned about. And we just seem to
be going down one course, which is the past, and not looking to
the future. And somehow we have to break that mind-set and
start looking out differently than we are today, I think, if we
are going to be successful, understanding that we have limited
resources. And if we keep going the way we are, Senator Akaka,
with the $10 trillion debt--we have some serious problems that
need to be addressed, and I am hoping that we have a lot of new
thinking. It is not to take anything away from what you are
trying to do and the next Administration as to how we are going
to handle this situation.
If I do not get a chance, thank you for your service.
Mr. Greene. Thank you, sir. Could I just respond to one of
your points, if you do not mind, Senator Voinovich?
I think there is an extraordinary level of compatibility
and coherence between what we as an Administration are trying
to do and what the reports that you cited, the HELP Commission
also, have concluded. And so as much as the stars ever get
lined up on this incredibly complex, important subject, I think
they are about as lined up as they are ever going to be in
terms of what outside groups are saying, what Members of
Congress are saying, and what we, the Administration, are
saying. And I think it provides a really good foundation to get
to a much better place in terms of coherent foreign assistance
programming, planning, and implementation, sir. And we greatly
appreciate your comments.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. I want to thank Senator Voinovich. Mr.
Greene, thank you so much for being here and for your
testimony. I want to commend you for being as candid as you
have been with your statements, and we look forward to
continuing to work on this and to improve the system. So thank
you very much.
Mr. Greene. Thank you, sir.
Senator Akaka. I want to welcome the second panel of
witnesses. The second panel of witnesses includes Leo Hindery,
Jr., Former Vice Chairman, Commission on Helping to Enhance the
Livelihood of People Around the Globe (HELP); Dr. Gordon Adams,
Distinguished Fellow, Henry L. Stimson Center; Anne C. Richard,
Vice President for Government Relations and Advocacy,
International Rescue Committee; Sam Worthington, President and
CEO, InterAction; and Dr. Gerald Hyman, Senior Adviser and
President of the Hills Program on Governance, Center for
Strategic and International Studies.
It is the custom of this Subcommittee to swear in all
witnesses, and I would ask all of you to please rise and raise
your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you
are about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?
Mr. Hindery. I do.
Mr. Adams. I do.
Ms. Richard. I do.
Mr. Worthington. I do.
Mr. Hyman. I do.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. Let the record note
that the witnesses responded in the affirmative.
Mr. Hindery, please proceed with your statement.
TESTIMONY OF LEO HINDERY, JR.,\1\ FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN,
COMMISSION ON HELPING TO ENHANCE THE LIVELIHOOD OF PEOPLE
AROUND THE GLOBE (HELP)
Mr. Hindery. Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, I am Leo
Hindery, and I was the Vice Chair of the HELP Commission, which
was created by Congress in the year 2005 to reflect on how best
to reform the tools of development assistance. And it is an
honor for me to be here today to testify to your Subcommittee.
I along with two other HELP Commission Members--Jeffrey Sachs
and Gayle Smith--prepared a Minority Commission Report entitled
``Revamping U.S. Foreign Assistance,'' and I ask that you place
that entire Minority Report into the record.\2\
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hindery appears in the Appendix
on page 54.
\2\ The Minority Commission Report entitled ``Revamping U.S.
Foreign Assistance,'' appears in the Appendix on page 159.
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In the few minutes I now have, I want to discuss in brief
three of the five most significant conclusions which we drew up
in our Minority Report, and I would ask, Mr. Chairman, that my
fuller testimony also be placed into the record.
Senator Akaka. Without objection.
Mr. Hindery. Even though the principle has been part of
U.S. foreign policy doctrine for 60 years, our first conclusion
was that the United States must continue to promote development
assistance as a core pillar of national security and American
moral values since this principle is now no longer universally
embraced. The 2006 National Security Strategy of the United
States explained well the rationale and the imperative of
development assistance when it said that, ``Development
reinforces diplomacy and defense, reducing long-term threats to
our national security by helping to build stable, prosperous,
and peaceful societies.''
Our second conclusion, and an extremely important one in
light of the testimony a moment ago, was that the United States
should immediately establish a new separate Cabinet-level
``Department for International Sustainable Development.'' This
new department would house USAID, PEPFAR, the President's
Malaria Initiative, and Millennium Challenge Corporation, plus
all new emerging initiatives such as in climate change. The
case for a separate Department rests on five principles: The
need, as I mentioned, to upgrade U.S. development assistance as
a pillar of U.S. national security; the need to improve U.S.
Government management and expertise in public health, climate
change, agronomy, demography, environmental engineering, and
economic development; the need to work effectively with similar
Cabinet-level departments and ministries in partner donor
countries; the need to de-politicize development assistance so
that it can be directed at the long-term investments that are
critical in the fight against poverty, hunger, disease, and
deprivation; and the need for coherence, which is apparent
today, of those U.S. policies which impact sustainable
development.
The shift, Mr. Chairman, as you commented, in the United
Kingdom in 1997 from having a sub-Cabinet development agency to
having a Cabinet-level department called DfID has dramatically
increased the standing, reputation, and experience of the
United Kingdom in the area of international development.
Consequently, it was our conclusion that DfID is now, in fact,
far ahead of USAID as a global thought-leader in development
policy and thus, relatively more successful.
Our third conclusion had to do with what works and with
what does not work with ODA, which is particularly germane to
this Subcommittee's strong interest in organizational process.
The discussion on aid effectiveness is often clouded by
confusions, by prejudices, and by simple misunderstandings.
Many studies, Mr. Chairman, try to find correlations between
overall aid and economic growth, and when they find little
positive correlation, they declare aid to be a failure. Yet
this low correlation does not prove that aid is failing, since
much of the aid is directed to countries in violence, famine,
or deep economic crisis. It is not a surprise, therefore, that
aid is often correlated with economic failure, not because aid
has caused the failure but, rather, because aid has responded
to failure. We need, as you have commented, a much more
sophisticated approach than standard simple correlations to
judge the effectiveness of aid. And then we need to assess the
objectives of specific aid programs and whether these
objectives are fulfilled.
Did the food aid stop starvation? Did immunizations save
lives or eradicate disease? Did infrastructure spending on
roads and ports help to generate new employment in new
industries? Did aid for schooling raise enrollments, completion
rates, and literacy? Did farm aid increase the productivity of
farms?
In short, I believe there are six keys to success in
development. First, interventions should be based on powerful,
low-cost technologies. Second, interventions should be
relatively easy to deliver and based on expert systems and
local ownership. Third, interventions should be applied at the
scale needed to solve the underlying problems. Fourth, in a
comment raised today, interventions should be reliably funded.
Fifth, interventions should be multilateral and draw support
from many governments and international agencies. Sixth, and
extremely important, interventions, as Senator Voinovich has
commented, should have specific objectives and strategies so
that success rates can be assessed.
Development assistance programs should have clear
objectives, and they should not directly aim for excessively
broad and overarching goals such as ``democracy'' or ``the end
of terror,'' even though broad goals such as these can
appropriately be among the direct and indirect motivations for
the actual interventions. But only, as the Senator has
commented, with specific objectives can there be measurements,
auditing, evaluations, and re-assessments as needed.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member, for this
opportunity, and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Hindery. Dr. Adams,
will you please proceed?
TESTIMONY OF GORDON ADAMS,\1\ DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, HENRY L.
STIMSON CENTER
Mr. Adams. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
delighted to appear before this hearing this afternoon. I
congratulate both of you for holding the hearing because, as
has already been said today several times, this is a very
propitious moment for thinking about how we strengthen,
improve, restructure and make more effective the development
assistance of the U.S. Government. So it is extremely timely.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Adams appears in the Appendix on
page 60.
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I also wanted to thank you in particular, Senator
Voinovich, for your service on the Advisory Panel for the study
that the American Academy of Diplomacy is sponsoring, which we
at the Stimson Center are writing. We appreciate your service
there as well and look forward to giving you a useful and
implementable result.
I will briefly make a few points today, and thank you for
putting my full statement in the record.
Precepts first, I focus on our foreign policy toolkit, and
our foreign policy toolkit is out of balance. We have relied on
the military instrument of power and have neglected and
understated our capabilities in diplomacy, development, and
foreign assistance. And it is my judgment that the Congress and
the next Administration are going to have to address that
priority.
I observe in my testimony that despite a growing State
Department operational budget in recent years, we still have a
Department that is inadequately staffed and funded to play a
full part in our foreign and national security policy.
And despite roughly doubling our foreign assistance over
the past 8 years, our development and foreign assistance
institutions still suffer from what I call a ``diaspora'' of
organizations and capabilities. They need to better integrated
and coordinated. They need more strategic direction. They need
more funding and staff. And they need, in my judgment, a
coordinated budget process to be effective.
So I want to mention four things that I recommend in the
testimony.
First off, with respect to the State Department, we need to
invest in additional staffing for the State Department and
reshape the career expectations of people going into America's
diplomacy. I think both of those are important. We will
recommend in the report that Senator Voinovich is helping us
with that there be a roughly 35-percent increase in the
overseas Foreign Service staffing of the State Department over
the next 5 years. But increasing the people is not in itself
enough. We need to have also different people or to evolve the
people we have. We have some fine diplomats, but the State
Department today--and this is very much at the core of my
testimony--is doing a great deal more than report, negotiate,
and represent, which is the classical function of a State
Department officer.
Through the State Department and through USAID, we have a
very strong and growing ``gray area'' of program activity at
the State Department: HIV programs in PEPFAR, the EUR
assistance programs in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet
Union, counterterrorism programs, and peacekeeping operations.
For all of these, we are getting a new generation and a new set
of experiences for our State Department diplomats.
We need to focus on that reality, in a very concentrated
way, to recruit, to train through their careers, to assign
across cones, to assign across departments, and to reward a
much broader career path in the State Department than what
traditionally has been the case.
We also think that it is very important to expand and
reward the work of the public diplomacy function at the State
Department. Senator Voinovich referred to this in his early
questions. We think that is a very important aspect, and we
will be recommending in the Stimson Academy Report an increase
in staffing and in programming for the public diplomacy
functions at the State Department.
I mention these issues because, in my judgment, they are
all connected. We are talking about the civilian capability of
the U.S. Government; our foreign assistance and diplomacy and
public diplomacy are connected in our effort to be effective.
Second, to come specifically to the area of foreign
assistance, when I was the Associate Director at the Office of
Management and Budget back in the early to mid-1990s, one of
the things that struck me most strongly was that most of the
accounts that are in what we call the Function 150, the
international affairs budget, were integrated at my desk. I was
an OMB official. It is not the place that these accounts,
programs, or strategies ought to be integrated. Because the
integration mechanisms at the State Department were not
effective, they were integrated at my desk. This reflects the
diaspora I mentioned earlier. And the diaspora has gotten worse
in this Administration. Congress and the Administration have
created programs that have the opportunity to be effective. I
am talking about PEPFAR and about the Millennium Challenge
Corporation, which make up the bulk of the growth in foreign
assistance funding over the last 6 or 7 years.
The consequence of the diaspora and your chart amply
demonstrates it--is the weakening of our core foreign
assistance institution: USAID. Here there is not only a need to
rebuild the core, but to restructure that core so it can carry
new responsibilities. It needs to reform to being a technical
and field agency as opposed to a contracting agency, and
forward to deal with the kinds of issues it now works on with
the Department of Defense and the private sector. I want to
note here that the flow of funding to the developing countries
right now from the private sector overwhelms any bilateral
official aid. The effective coordination with other donors
requires an adequate staff in the field.
So we have a very strong recommendation in the study about
doubling the field presence of USAID and making sure that it is
technical, programmatic, and on the ground, not just more
contracting officers. We see USAID as the central player in our
foreign assistance and development programs. I would urge
appointing someone to the position that exists in statute but
has not been filled, making the current Office of Director of
Foreign Assistance an actual Deputy Secretary of State. A
Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources position
exists in law, in Title 22. And we recommend appointing that
person and dual-hatting them as the Administrator of USAID.
This will ensure a voice for foreign assistance at the
intergovernmental level, and it will assure responsiveness to
the Congress because it is a confirmed official responsible for
development assistance.
The third point is strategic planning. We have talked a
little bit about that, and Mr. Greene talked about that a good
deal, too. This comes to the core of the problem. There is a
close tie between our foreign policy goals and our foreign
assistance and development programs. Rather than separating
them, I see over time the need for a very close tie if the
United States is going to have a powerful and effective
civilian foreign policy toolkit, and a more integrated
strategic planning and budgeting capability that meets the
needs of development as a central goal of U.S. international
engagement.
This to me is not a question of development versus foreign
assistance. A very broad definition of development, one used by
most of the development community today, incorporates programs
that we call ``foreign assistance'' and programs that we call
``development assistance.'' And it is not a question of ``short
term'' versus ``long term.'' The short and the long are
increasingly interlocked in our statecraft.
There will always be some conflicts between short and long
term perspectives. That is just in the nature of things. But
both are important. It is important to recognize that reality--
--
Senator Akaka. Dr. Adams, would you please summarize?
Mr. Adams. Yes, I will. Thank you.
The State Department does both long and short term work.
USAID does both short and long term work. So we see Mr.
Greene's office as flawed, flexible, fixable, and an important
foundation for building this long-term, transparent capacity
for budgeting.
I will simply add one other point, and that is that in the
testimony I talk a bit about this question of militarization,
and both here and in the Stimson Center Report, we will try to
be responsive to Secretary Gates' concern about militarization
of foreign assistance to bring back into the State Department
and the USAID world the authorities over many of those programs
now being implemented by the Defense Department under its own
authorities.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Dr. Adams. Ms. Richard,
please proceed.
TESTIMONY OF ANNE C. RICHARD,\1\ VICE PRESIDENT FOR GOVERNMENT
RELATIONS AND ADVOCACY, INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE
Ms. Richard. Thank you, Senators. Thank you for holding
this hearing on Reforming the Foreign Assistance Bureaucracy.
Your interest in this issue is very well timed. There is a
consensus emerging that change is needed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Richard appears in the Appendix
on page 75.
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This afternoon, I would like to outline three major weak
points in the foreign assistance bureaucracy--one, leadership;
two, people; and three, coordination--and propose steps that
could help address these weak points and strengthen the U.S.
foreign aid program. My remarks are informed by my position as
the Vice President of the International Rescue Committee, an
internationally recognized relief and development agency, and
also my past experience at the State Department. I was
Madeleine Albright's adviser on budgets and planning.
I should also mention that I am the co-author of a
forthcoming paper from the Stanley Foundation and Center for
New American Security that describes how the next
Administration might improve U.S. foreign operations; and my
co-author, Paul Clayman, was the counsel for Senator Lugar on
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I request that my
remarks and the forthcoming paper be put into the record.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ The working paper from the Stanley Foundation and Center for
New American Security entitled ``Improving US National Security:
Options for Strengthening US Foreign Operations,'' appears in the
Appendix on page 120.
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Senator Akaka. Without objection, it will be made part of
the record.
Ms. Richard. Thank you.
Moving quickly to my first point, I think many of us here
believe that stronger development management, policy, and
leadership is needed from the U.S. Government. There is just a
stronger need for leadership of development assistance. The
Bush Administration has increased overall foreign aid but
really opted out of using the U.S. Agency for International
Development for major new initiatives and instead developed
``work-arounds,'' such as creating the Millennium Challenge
Corporation as a separate agency and also funneling HIV/USAIDS
funding, the PEPFAR funds, through an office in the State
Department. A logical move would be to fold these initiatives
into USAID and thus, bring most of the major aid projects under
one roof and ideally, reporting to one strong leader within the
Administration.
The Administrator of USAID is an important job that needs
to be filled by someone who can speak with authority. This
person has to go to conference tables at the White House and be
included in the discussions as decisions are being made and not
told what happened later on. In international meetings and
summits, the USAID Administrator should be empowered to meet
with development ministers from other governments as a peer.
Put simply, the Administrator must be the point person for
relief and development in the Administration.
My written statement discusses militarization of foreign
aid and concerns about reconstruction after conflicts. These
are very hot topics right now, but they are parts of this
overall foreign aid picture.
All of these various trends seemed to have boiled down
lately to a disagreement among experts about the best place to
lead U.S. development aid efforts. Some would say leadership
should be at the top of the State Department, as Mr. Greene
did, or with a new Cabinet-level development department, as
both InterAction and Mr. Hindery would maintain, or through a
coordinator based in or around the White House.
Paul Clayman and I developed what we call the ``hybrid
model,'' which we think combines the best of all these ideas: A
new directorate for foreign operations at the National Security
Council with staff who are knowledgeable and able to obtain
input from key actors and help resolve disputes as they arise;
a State Department that can coordinate and influence the
overall direction of the full range of aid programs--which, as
we know, is more than just development aid--to address the
President's foreign policy needs--and that could be built off
of the current F process--and a strong development agency,
which I would propose be a revamped and empowered USAID--that
includes all or most major development programs.
I would also propose that we continue the practice of
having the leaders from different agencies involved in foreign
aid meet to discuss the trends and the policies that the
Administration has, and this could be modeled on the Millennium
Challenge Corporation's board. Importantly, this hybrid model
could be readily implemented within a short period of time by a
new Administration.
There is a need for more people in both the State
Department and USAID to carry out the important work of these
agencies. It will be important for the Department of State and
USAID to explain the impact new personnel will have, how they
will make a difference, and what tasks they will undertake. Not
just more people are needed, but more training, too. The
international affairs agencies need trained and skilled
personnel to match modern demands. This includes the ability to
speak hard languages, appreciation for the use of technology,
and a good understanding of program management. In terms of
skills, there is a clear need for personnel who can respond
rapidly to crises and can play useful roles in post-conflict
situations.
Finally, both the State Department and USAID need
contingency funds to head off and respond to crises. I know
proposals for contingency funds almost never survive the budget
process. I have firsthand experience in that. But I would
propose modeling a disaster contingency fund on the highly
successful Emergency Refugee and Migration Account that the
State Department manages for refugee crises.
My recommendation, therefore, is that this Subcommittee
speaks out in support of greater investment in the
international affairs budget and the personnel of these
agencies, but that you also seek good answers to the questions
of what the new hires will be doing and how the workforce will
be used to tackle global threats and the full range of modern
demands on Foreign Service officers.
My third point is that the very complexity that Rich Greene
talked about requires coordination. Many of those who criticize
the current way the U.S. Government organizes foreign aid
complain about the large number of agencies that run aid
programs and the long list of budget accounts that fund aid.
And so I think a fresh approach would probably consolidate this
large number of government actors into a smaller number of
decisionmakers that work more closely together. But there will
always be multiple actors because of the complexity of U.S.
interests overseas. A coherent strategy does not necessarily
mean that U.S. national security priorities, goals, and
objectives can be easily described or condensed into a simple
catchphrase. U.S. national interests are broad and varied. The
United States has relations with, and Americans have interests
in--and I am sure nobody knows this better than U.S. Senators
who hear from their constituents what their interests are--
nearly every country on the globe. U.S. Government engagement
with the rest of the world should be expected to be multi-
faceted and complex.
What is true is that the many U.S. foreign aid actors,
organizations, and budget accounts make the entire enterprise
harder to explain to senior officials, the media, the public,
and to justify it to you, the Congress. Government leaders
should do a better job communicating the importance of this
work. There is a need to coordinate across various U.S.
Government agencies in order to align U.S. foreign aid programs
with foreign policy goals, avoid duplication, and ensure a
smart approach. The paper Paul Clayman and I wrote on the
hybrid model also proposes ways to do this.
Before concluding, I just want to say, Senator Voinovich,
your question earlier about the continuing resolution and
really the reliance, too, on supplementals to fund emergency
funding and crises in the world is having an impact on
organizations like mine, the International Rescue Committee.
What happens is there is a great deal of uncertainty at the
start of the fiscal year, when managers, good managers, should
be sitting down deciding how many people to hire, where they
should be deployed, and how do you set about operating for the
rest of the year. Without certainty, you cannot know that, and,
in fact, when you are told that your funding has been cut but
you might get more later in a supplemental, what ends up
happening is you have to let people go. You have to give up the
rent on your property. You have to not order the supplies or
send people for training. And it is very hard to do that later
in the fiscal year when half or three-quarters of the fiscal
year has gone by.
As bad as that is in terms of a management problem, it is
really more troubling in life-and-death situations such as the
situations some of my colleagues working in failed and fragile
environments see. You cannot go back in time and deliver
healthy babies after they have been born, you cannot go back
and ``back-feed'' growing children, and you cannot stop the
spread of deadly diseases as they are tearing through villages
three-quarters of the way through the year. So I would be very
happy to talk to you more about that. We have done a lot of
thinking about that, both in my organization and within
InterAction, our coalition of relief and development agencies.
Let me stop there. Thank you for holding this hearing, and
I look forward to your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Ms. Richard.
Mr. Worthington, please proceed with your statement.
TESTIMONY OF SAMUEL A. WORTHINGTON,\1\ PRESIDENT AND CEO,
INTERACTION
Mr. Worthington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure
to be here this afternoon. I am President and CEO of
InterAction, which is the largest coalition of U.S.-based
international development and relief organizations.\2\
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Worthington appears in the
Appendix on page 81.
\2\ The Policy Paper from InterAction, June 2008, entitled
``Proposed Major Components and Organization of a Cabinet-level
Department for Global and Human Development,'' appears in the Appendix
on page 144.
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Foreign assistance plays a critical role in advancing U.S.
national interests overseas, and it represents, as we know, our
humanitarian values and puts the best face of America forward
to the world in many ways. InterAction's 168 members receive $6
billion a year from the American public directly, which is more
than twice what they receive in partnership with the U.S.
Government. We believe that the cornerstone of our foreign
assistance portfolio is development assistance, which at the
heart of it should be poverty alleviation. InterAction believes
that the chief goal of U.S. development assistance should be to
reduce poverty and help countries and people achieve their full
potential, and that these reflect American humanitarianism and
equal opportunity for all.
The problem today is that we have too few development
dollars spread over too many agencies, as we see in these
charts,\3\ fragmented across 26 different departments, and our
aid programs are often poorly coordinated, at best, and at
worst, working at cross purposes.
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\3\ The charts referred to appear in the Appendix beginning on page
117.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is for this reason that InterAction and its members
believe that the United States should develop a National
Development Strategy and that this National Development
Strategy, among other things, should prescribe how foreign
assistance programs will be coordinated and integrated with
other foreign policy tools for working with low-income
countries, assert that poverty reduction is a primary goal of
foreign assistance, recognize the role of women in reducing
poverty, describe how U.S. development programs relate to the
Departments of State and Defense, and lay out how our
assistance programs should coordinate with other bilateral and
multilateral and other funding, including funding from the U.S.
nonprofit community.
This last point about coordination raises another important
issue for us, which is the government's capacity to be a good
partner in development. Right now USAID, which is our lead
development agency, lacks the capacity to coordinate
effectively with other bilateral and multilateral donors or of
its own partners, including U.S. civil society. The latter
problem is caused by the agency's human capital limitations,
which we were talking about earlier today, as USAID just does
not have the staff to effectively manage the grants and
cooperative agreements that are used and comprise its primary
funding relationship with the U.S. civil society and NGOs. This
problem was exacerbated when the agency's Bureau for Policy and
Program Coordination, which handled many functions related to
donor coordination, was moved out of the agency into the Office
of the Director of Foreign Assistance.
I have made 11 key recommendations in my written testimony
that I believe will improve the government's capacity to
respond to this coordination, and I would like to share a few
of them with you right now.
First, I would urge Congress to work closely with Director
of U.S. Foreign Assistance, Henrietta Fore, to implement her
Development Leadership Initiative, which is, in essence,
turning back some of the challenges that have plagued USAID for
the last 15 years.
Second, I urge Congress and the Administration to work
together to replace USAID's operating expense (OE) account with
a funding mechanism that allows Congress to maintain its
oversight, but gives the agency the resources and flexibility
it needs to be effective.
Third, we need to prioritize monitoring and evaluation so
that USAID can know what works and what does not.
Fourth, to ensure that USAID staff know the difference
between acquisition contracts and assistance cooperative
agreements. The NGO community has always approached USAID a co-
equal partner rather than simply a contracting agency that pays
for development programs.
And, finally, we need to elevate development assistance
within our government to its rightful place alongside defense
and diplomacy, a principle that is well established as part of
our government's National Security Strategy.
It is InterAction's position that the best way to elevate
development assistance is to create a Cabinet-level Department
for Global and Human Development. A Cabinet-level department
would streamline the various goals and objectives of U.S.
foreign assistance as well as the current proliferation of
assistance programs, including PEPFAR and the MCC, and creating
a Cabinet-level department would protect development from
militarization by the Department of Defense or subordinated to
the tactical goals of the State Department.
Those who suggest that USAID ought to be merged with the
State Department underestimate the differences in the culture
and the functions between the two agencies. The alignment of
development and diplomacy is important. So is the alignment of
defense and diplomacy. And yet no reasonable person would ever
suggest merging the State Department into DOD. Soldiers enlist
in our military to become warriors not aid workers. Similarly,
State Department officials aspire to be diplomats not
development specialists. Humanitarian development policy
experts choose to work at USAID or the Cabinet-level department
we propose because they believe they can make a difference in
the lives of the world's poor, particularly as it relates to
our national interests. InterAction has a paper that proposes
how we might organize such a department, which I submit for the
record along with my written testimony.
Hundreds of CEOs and InterAction are not alone in seeking a
Cabinet-level department. It is an idea that is gaining
momentum here in Washington, also the position of the
Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, a bipartisan group of
experts from think tanks, universities, and NGOs, of which I am
a part.
It is clear that the 21st Century presents us with foreign
policy challenges that our current development infrastructure
is ill-equipped to handle. We are also at a point in our
history when respect for the United States abroad is at an all-
time low. At the same time, the next President will take over a
country with a large constituency that supports international
development, as well as a military that supports improvement in
our non-military tools. It is vitally important that he works
with Congress to reach a grand bargain that prioritizes these
issues and gives the Executive Branch the flexibility it needs
to respond to a rapidly changing world and ensures
comprehensive legislative oversight.
The United States must elevate development within our
government and give it the space it needs to be effective vis-
a-vis defense and diplomacy, focus our foreign assistance and
development programs on a streamlined set of objectives by
creating a National Development Strategy, and improve the
capacity of our government to partner effectively with U.S.
NGOs, with other donors, and with aid recipients.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Worthington. Mr.
Hyman, would you please proceed with your statement?
TESTIMONY OF GERALD F. HYMAN,\1\ SENIOR ADVISOR AND PRESIDENT
OF THE HILLS PROGRAM ON GOVERNANCE, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Mr. Hyman. Thank you, Chairman Akaka and Ranking Member
Voinovich, for holding this hearing and for giving me the
opportunity to appear before you. I ask that my full written
testimony be included in the record.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Hyman appears in the Appendix on
page 94.
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Senator Akaka. Yes. Other materials that are being
requested by our witnesses, without objection, will be included
in the record.
Mr. Hyman. Some of the points I wanted to make have already
been made by others, so I will be briefer than I might
otherwise have been. I am sure you will not object to that.
The first and most important, of course, is that the
organization of U.S. assistance is fractured, tangled,
mismanaged, and mal-aligned. That is a point that everyone at
this table--and, in fact, Mr. Greene pointed out himself when
he said it was fragmented across multiple bureaus and offices
within State and USAID. And your chart points that out even
more forcefully. USAID was, and remains to some extent, the
primary assistance vehicle, although it is deeply troubled,
weak, and demoralized, and that needs to be turned around, in
my opinion. So the first of these three points is the fractured
nature of our assistance programs.
Within the State Department, we have a number of programs
that could easily have been managed by USAID and were pulled
out for reasons of bureaucratic turf wars, personality, and a
whole variety of other measures that had, I think, little to do
with the substance of what was going on. That includes PEPFAR,
it includes the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and it
includes the Middle East Partnership Initiative.
I was in the original group that worked on what became the
Millennium Challenge Corporation, and initially that was--a
separate corporation was only one of several options available
for how to do a program like the MCC program. Pulling it out
just was another example of picking away at what could have
been or should have been and was a central development agency.
That trend, it seems to me, needs to be reversed.
The second major feature--and that is all within the 150
Account, all underneath the Secretary of State, underneath the
Agency for International Development. The second point is the
point that is on your chart as well, and that is the other
government departments that are doing assistance, with the
possible exception, sir, of the Bureau for Indian Affairs. It
is not obvious to me that there is any department in the U.S.
Government that does not have a foreign assistance program of
its own, and that creates a huge problem of fracturing,
fragmenting, and so on, particularly when people from different
agencies are engaged in similar or parallel programs in the
same country at the same time and often giving contrary advice.
So it seems to me that fracturing is the first issue that needs
to be dealt with.
Secretary Rice has tried to deal with that through the 150
Account and the development of the so-called F process and the
Director of Foreign Assistance. In my personal opinion, it is a
defective attempt. But as Mr. Greene pointed out, they are
working on some changes, which I hope will improve the
situation dramatically.
My second point: I agree with Mr. Adams--and I am afraid I
disagree with some of my other colleagues on this panel--about
the advisability of separating the assistance--a coordinated
assistance effort into a different independent department
separate from the Department of State, for a variety of
reasons. First, the new National Security Strategy calls for
development diplomacy and defense into the same--into a unified
national security policy. I do not think that separating
development out of that is going to increase the coherence of
those three. It seems to me it is going to elevate the problems
of integration to a higher level, which may require, as Ms.
Richard suggested, a NSC arbiter. But it seems to me it is not
a wise idea, again, to pull things apart and then move them to
the top for integration into the National Security Council,
which will wind up having to adjudicate a whole variety of turf
and theoretical and implementation issues that it seems to me
would be better handled within the Department.
Second, there are other kinds of programs than the pure
development account programs, and those are in the ESF
accounts. We can talk about and I think it would be useful to
talk about joining those two, but the fact is that we do a
variety of ``development programs'' in countries for reasons
other than pure development. Haiti, Sudan, the FATA regions of
Pakistan, North Korea--the list goes on and on. These are
programs that look like development programs done for very
different reasons. We are not putting $750 million into the
FATA because it is a great development partner. We are doing it
for other reasons. And those, in my opinion, are perfectly
reasonable to do, perfectly legitimate, and the programs may
look like development programs--education, schools, roads,
health--but they are done for very different reasons. And that
is why you have, we have, separate accounts. It might be useful
to come back and relook at those accounts, but those are
programs that, again, require diplomacy and development to be
linked together, in my personal view.
If you pull them apart, either two-thirds of the
``development budget'' would not be funded, or it would be
funded at levels justifiable only on purely development
grounds, or they would be managed by the Department of State
while you had a separate development level agency doing the so-
called development program. I do not see that the first two are
advisable, and the third is neither advisable nor realistic, it
seems to me. So I would keep them within the confines of one
agency.
The third thing is strategy and tactics. I would be happy
to talk about that in the question period, but the fact is that
the F process that Mr. Greene talked about merges tax strategy
and tactics, hyper-centralizes the decisions in Washington,
does not adequately, in my opinion, look at the advantages of
the field programs and field expertise. It oversimplifies the
character of recipient countries. It undermines the value of
our in-country expertise and has damaged the attempt to measure
impact, as you discussed earlier.
So I have nine recommendations. I think I am out of time.
They are in my testimony, and I will just leave it at that.
Thank you so much for the opportunity, and I look forward to
your questions.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Hyman.
I would like to ask my first question of Mr. Hindery. I
know you have limited time here. Mr. Hindery, in the four tasks
you identified for starting up a new department for
International Sustainable Development, you did not include the
need to ensure that human capital needs, such as recruitment,
retention, or training are addressed, even though you mention
these needs as part of your case for starting a separate
department.
Do you believe that a new department would already have
most of its human capital needs met?
Mr. Hindery. Mr. Chairman, I think the question is a
seminal one, and you have raised it in other contexts this
afternoon. This is about quality of personnel. It is about
quantity of personnel. But it is also about morale. And in our
longer testimony, my colleagues and I on the HELP Commission
concluded that all three of them can only be met well in a
separate department.
I take exception with some of the other panelists. I think
it is the status that would come from a separate department
that would address the morale question, and I think that as
these three Secretaries sit as partners in this initiative of
defense, diplomacy, and development, that all of the management
concerns that you and Senator Voinovich have raised could be
more easily addressed.
I have had the privilege of being a chief executive of
large organizations, and that is an unmanageable chart to your
right, sir, absent consolidation and coordination and status--
and I really would emphasize, as somebody who has had the
privilege of leading large numbers of people, that status is
critical. Status is critical to attracting people. It is
critical to retaining people. And absent it, I think foreign
assistance will not be the success that you and Senator
Voinovich might like to see.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Hindery and Mr. Worthington, in your
testimony, you make a case for a new separate Cabinet-level
department focused on international development. Do you see any
other practical alternatives to this such as improving the F
Bureau or somehow keeping the foreign assistance
responsibilities within the State Department?
Mr. Hindery. Mr. Chairman, over the 3 years that the HELP
Commission existed--and I was, as I mentioned, its Senate-
appointed vice chair--with a lot of exhaustive review, all of
the Commissioners concluded that there were only three choices
available to this Congress on this issue: A super State
Department, that is, the collapse of this activity into the
State Department; a much emboldened USAID; or the third
alternative, which Mr. Worthington and I and Ms. Richard, I
think, are in consensus on, which is the stand-alone
department.
We did not find a fourth, Mr. Chairman. I do not think
there is one. And it was our conclusion that the negatives of a
super State Department belie the principles of three D's as you
would have just killed off one of the D's. And as for an
emboldened USAID, it would not confront the three charts which
you have presented to us today. Just emboldening USAID and
managing it better would not fix its structure problem.
I think as a final comment--and I would defer to Mr.
Worthington, who is so able on this subject, and to Ms.
Richard--there is such a good model in the DfID success that
for you and the Ranking Member, you do not have to speculate
that this works. It has been proven to work in the DfID model.
And I think that would give great comfort, should give great
comfort to the next Administration and to this Congress.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Mr. Worthington.
Mr. Worthington. The F process was a beginning of an
attempt to engage in coordination, and as such, it should be
applauded as a first step. The challenge is for a community
that engages directly with the U.S. Government in the field,
that coordination did not go far enough and in many ways was
too centralized in the way it related to the field. So one
level, we applaud the coordination attempt, but it simply did
not go far enough.
The second is a recognition that any attempt to bring all
these actors together will only work in terms of how it is
reflected in an embassy overseas. You will always have an
Ambassador as the primary representative of the United States
overseas, but underneath that, right now you do not have a
clear actor who is responsible for U.S. foreign assistance on
the ground as it relates to different parts of the various
programs you have over there. At times, you do not even know
who is going to come and visit a country from different
agencies.
So our community--and this is a discussion among some 100
different CEOs over a long period of time. It slowly emerged
that we needed to have this broader degree of bringing together
the different parts of U.S. foreign assistance to simply enable
us to work with. Some members of our community are working with
10, 15 different parts of the U.S. Government.
Our challenge was that when we saw the F process come into
being, the overall goals and direction of U.S. foreign
assistance shifted significantly at the local level and in
budgeting to reflect interests of the State Department and
diplomatic interests, which are purely--very much valid for
U.S. foreign assistance, but we saw that there was no longer
the space for what we would view as development was actually
narrowing at the time when resources are significantly
increasing for development work within the Administration. And
that led us to conclude that it was only establishing a more
empowered USAID ultimately to a Cabinet-level department under
a broad strategy would be the best outcome.
Senator Akaka. Ms. Richard, would you care to comment on
that question?
Ms. Richard. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Where I agree with
Mr. Worthington and Mr. Hindery is on the importance of having
a USAID that is functioning and that is strong. And I am really
surprised that the current Administration, which talked a lot
about taking a very businesslike approach to foreign aid,
bypassed working to fix whatever is wrong with USAID and set up
duplicative, new, and other organizations.
I thought that if one wanted to be businesslike and be a
good caretaker of the taxpayers' money, one would have looked
at USAID, examined how it was operating, and come up with
proposals to strengthen it. And so I would propose that the
next Administration do that.
Where I differ from them is that I do not think there is
anything magic about elevating an organization to a Cabinet
level. To me, that is no silver bullet. I think that what is
really needed is that the organization operate very well and
have the support of the President and of the Secretary of
State, and that will enhance the status, and that will enhance
the morale of the personnel in the organization.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for that. I am going to
ask Senator Voinovich for his questions.
Senator Voinovich. One of the things that I was really
happy about when Senator Akaka put this hearing together was
that we are kind of at a junction or watershed period where we
have a chance to really do something different. And I think one
of the things that needs to be underscored is the landscape of
the world has changed, and that is, we have a whole different
variety of challenges that we must face. But the one thing I
would like to ask, Mr. Adams, in the report coming out from the
American Diplomacy, have all these people at the table had any
input at all in the report?
Mr. Adams. Yes, in a variety of ways, they have. Anne
Richard is a member of the Advisory Group helping us with that
study. That group has taken into consideration all three of the
pieces of work: The Modernizing the Foreign Assistance Network
in InterAction; the work Jerry Hyman did for the Carnegie
Endowment; and the HELP Commission report as well. All of those
pieces of work are taken into consideration in the work that we
are doing.
Senator Voinovich. It seems to me that we have a gigantic
public-private partnership, and I think it is really important
that you take into consideration the contribution that many of
these organizations are making. I think you said, Mr.
Worthington, they spend more money than we do combined. And so
that is something that is very special, and we ought to be
encouraging that, and there ought to be as much coordination
going on as possible.
I think the problems that are going to be confronting the
next President are enormous in so many areas. I would urge all
of you to really get together and get up early in the morning
and go to bed late at night trying to come back with some kind
of consensus, a recommendation to Congress and to the next
President, about how this thing should happen. As I say, the
stars are in line. Two years ago, I talked with General Jones
about this, as well as the head of Africa--and they all--
everybody seems to understand we have got to do something
different. But I think that if we get into the next year and we
have got people going different directions, it will make it
difficult for us to be successful.
I am going to spend a lot of time trying to figure out this
concept of a new department because I have experienced--and so
has Senator Akaka--this whole new Department of Homeland
Security. And it is a nightmare and probably should never have
been put together the way it was. And I say shame on the
Administration for not coming up here and wrestling with us to
say, look, we have got the job to do and this is the way we
think we need to do it, instead of letting us kind of impose
it; and now that it is not working and things are not going the
way they are supposed to, we just say, Well, that is your baby,
you take care of it.
I think that is really important to think about how does
that get done. You have a lot of different groups out there,
and how much more difficult or less difficult would it be than
the Department of Homeland Security? We did the Defense
Department. There was kind of a thread that ran through all of
it, and it was a lot easier to do. You have different cultures,
all kinds of things that need to be looked at.
So I would really like you to give some more thought to how
to handle that situation, and the other thing, of course, is
the issue of the earmarks that are there. Again, that does not
give you the flexibility that you need to look at the programs
and how do they jibe together and how you can maximize the
dollars that are available.
Mr. Adams. Senator, since you asked my view on the
department, let me be clear, I do not, in fact, favor creating
a separate Department of Development. My views really join Anne
Richard's and Jerry Hyman's. The reason I have that view is
precisely because, as I said in my opening statement, the
reality of our foreign affairs agencies and programs is that
there is a substantial degree of integration, overlap, and even
cooperation particularly between the State Department and USAID
with respect to both program definition, program
implementation, and the objectives served by the programs. This
is what I called the ``gray area.'' It is really the connection
between our foreign policy objectives, our national security
objectives, and the important role that development has in
those objectives.
USAID does a number of things, not just development
programs. It works closely with the Defense Department today in
Afghanistan. In Iraq, as you know, it has transition
initiatives programs, conflict management, military affairs
programs and disaster assistance, all of which focus on the
near term. And in the State Department, you have a European
Assistance Program that is budgeted and planned by the EUR
Bureau in the State Department and implemented in part at
USAID. They have to work with each other hand in glove all the
time.
In other words, we have a rapidly changing culture--here I
do disagree with Leo Hindery--in the State Department with
respect to its attention to program definition and
implementation and to long term objectives in the field. And we
have a foreign assistance organization which can do both long
term and short term at the same time.
In my judgment, this is best served--and here I join Anne
Richard and Jerry Hyman--by strengthening the capacity of USAID
in relationship to the State Department. My recommendation is
that a Deputy Secretary of State position for resources and
management that exists in law be, in fact, the steering
official for the foreign assistance programs of the United
States, these programs give both accountability to Capitol Hill
and a presence at the decision tables in the White House.
That vision may not have quite all the details right, but
it conforms to the reality of U.S. involvement overseas today.
Trying to separate out one very specific thing narrowly defined
as poverty reduction and development is not an accurate
description of what we call ``development'' programs in the
government and would artificially separate out these other
policy-relevant programs. Then where is their home? What do
they do?
Senator Voinovich. Mr. Hindery wants to comment.
Mr. Hindery. Senator, I think that your concern about the
problems around the creation of the Department of Homeland
Security are well stated. We looked at that, and we all have to
remember that DHS was born out of the tragedy of September 11,
2001, and many of its activities were new in their own right.
Senator Voinovich. Pardon me. You said something about the
DfID model?
Mr. Hindery. The DfID model, which is the euphemism for the
United Kingdom's stand-alone department. It is called the
Department for International Development (DfID).
Senator Voinovich. That was the other thing I was thinking
about when you were talking. I wonder how other people handle
it. So you are referring to the way they----
Mr. Hindery. The United Kingdom, Senator, has a stand-alone
department.
I would go back to the comment about the Department of
Homeland Security. We need to remember that much of its
problems were because it was also trying to start new
initiatives. U.S. foreign assistance already exists, and it has
existed for 60 years. It is a noble part of what we do as a
Nation.
If you and your colleagues looked at it more as a
reformation, a rehabilitation of what we are doing now and not
the entirety of a new initiative, as DHS was, the Department of
Homeland Security, while it is not an unformidable task, it may
be more comforting to your and your colleagues as you try to
draw the contrast.
Senator Voinovich. Ms. Richard.
Ms. Richard. The proposal that I put forward is less than
ideal. It was put forward because it is a compromise between
people who would like to see a Cabinet-level development agency
and people who think that the State Department should do more,
should be more in the leadership.
So as a practitioner, Paul Clayman and I were looking for a
way to bridge these two communities.
Senator Voinovich. How long were you with Secretary
Albright?
Ms. Richard. I was at the State Department starting in May
1990, working actually for Deputy Secretary Eagleburger, and I
was there most of the 1990s. And for 2 years, I reported
directly to Secretary Albright on these activities.
Senator Voinovich. So you were there for a while.
Ms. Richard. Most of the decade of the 1990s I was working
on foreign aid and trying to figure out how to work across the
agencies that were--and try to bring more coherence. And what
is happening today is a much more serious effort than we were
able to mount back then, although every Secretary of State has
cared about this, and usually the longer they are in the job,
the more they care about it because they realize that this is
indeed the toolkit they have to make a difference in the world.
So our proposal is a compromise. It is not ideal, but one
of the benefits of it is it could be done relatively easily in
the first 90 days of a new Administration.
Now, could you do more and could you do something more
towards an ideal? Yes, you could, but in order to do that, you
would have to have the President personally interested, I
think, with the White House behind it, and some sort of
understanding at the outset with Congress that there would be
joint work to produce something useful.
We have seen how hard it is to get foreign assistance
legislation passed in the Congress, and that is why I do not
have a great deal of hope that a major restructuring could be
carried out. But as you say, it is an interesting time. There
is a lot more attention to this. You may have a better sense up
here on the appetite for undertaking something large and
sweeping.
I do think there is a consensus that is changing----
Senator Voinovich. I am taking too much time. I would like
to interrupt you. The thing that is really important here is
that you can have a new President, and new Presidents like to
do new initiatives. And you are complaining about the
Millennium challenge corporation and other things that should
have been there, and they did not--they wanted to have
something that they could point to. And I think that if there
is not a lot of good work done before that and you can go to
the next President and say, look, we worked this thing out, we
do not think we need to have a new department, here is the way
you can get it done and try and say that his initiative will be
that he is going to bring these other things together in a
special way. I think it is really important you do that because
if it does not happen, the new guy is going to come in and say,
hey, I am doing it this way, and off we go, and a year from now
or 2 years from now, maybe we get something done. We do not
have time for that.
Ms. Richard. Well, where there is consensus is there is
consensus change is needed; there is agreement the United
States must be more effective on this. There is a general
belief that foreign aid is indeed a useful tool to pursue U.S.
national interests. There is a recognition that the United
States needs a better balance between military and civilian
tools. There is a desire to consolidate the large number of
actors. There is an emphasis on the need for coordination, and
there is a recognition that we need a longer-term strategic
vision for U.S. programs. So I believe everyone here at this
table would agree to that and that becomes then the nucleus for
pulling people together around those concepts.
In looking at what the candidates have said, they have not
come up with well-developed proposals along these lines, but
they are talking about change and trying to do more and
investing in tools of reaching out to foreign countries and
foreign publics. So in order for them to achieve what they
would like to do in the concrete, specific proposals, they are
going to have to have a better bureaucracy to support that.
Finally, I would like to say that the International Rescue
Committee benefits from private fundraising. We get grants from
the U.S. Government to carry out programs in the U.S. national
interest. We also, though, receive monies from the United
Kingdom Government's Department for International Development.
And what is interesting to me is that they are very good at
funding some of the forgotten and neglected crises. They
provide a lot of funding for us for the Democratic Republic of
the Congo, which has really fallen off the screen here in the
United States, even though there has been tremendous rates of
mortality there. And they are also very good at looking how
climate change has the potential to really hurt some of the
world's more poor and vulnerable people.
So I can only say very positive things about the U.K.
example, and I think it is worth looking more at that example
and talking more to them.
Senator Voinovich. All right. Mr. Worthington.
Mr. Worthington. I think we have to take into account a
fundamentally changed external environment. I mentioned earlier
that our community raises $6 billion from the American public.
It makes us a donor of the size roughly of France. When you
look around the world, many times in a given country, the
United States is just one of many development actors in a
country. Those actors are the NGO community, the private
sector, other development actors and so forth.
The challenge is, as the United States, we then have
multiple actors of our own. So when it comes to leveraging
things--leveraging private resources, leveraging resources from
the NGO community--our government does not take advantage of it
the way we could. We could be matching you 2:1 in terms of
resources in many types of programs, and yet it is divided
across many different actors.
The DfID group is very good at leveraging how the U.K. fits
in a given country compared to other development actors in a
country, and the United States, by not having a development
strategy of where is our specific value-added, where can we
make a difference, we do not take as much advantage of that as
could other actors.
The other is InterAction did a study of many of our members
in terms of the implementation of the F process in the field,
and unfortunately, we got some relatively negative feedback,
both in terms of morale--and this was feedback from partners of
the U.S. Government as well as within USAID. In a sense, at a
time when we need to be empowering development within the U.S.
Government, we should not be taking steps that disempower it.
We need to be able to elevate as much as we can.
Now, whether that leads to a Cabinet level, I do not know,
but there has been a lot of consensus, and it goes from the
IRC's CEO, other actors within our broad community, to the
Brookings Institution, the Center for Foreign Relations, other
actors who have gotten together in this Modernizing Foreign
Assistance. And whether you go all the way to the Cabinet
agency one can debate, but the broad elements seem to run
across many different groups, both from the Republican and
Democrat, of the need, one, for fundamental reform; two, that
there is a need to elevate in some way development to create a
greater space for the voice, a capacity to better leverage U.S.
interests in development overseas; and to do that under a
strategy that is comprehensive and goes across multiple actors
within the U.S. Government if it is not just one department.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you.
Senator Akaka. I thank Senator Voinovich for his questions.
For the second round, I have just two questions, and I will
also call on Senator Voinovich again. But this question is for
the panel.
Like the military, the Foreign Service prefers to recruit
most of it officers at the entry level. Dr. Adams suggests
recruiting FSOs at the mid-career levels may be preferable
since many, especially those who have served in the military,
NGOs, or the business world, may bring programmatic, technical,
or other critical skills.
Do you think that the Foreign Service culture, especially
at USAID, could find a greater role for mid-career-level
employees who desire to join the Foreign Service? Are there any
obstacles that would prevent this from happening on a large
scale?
Mr. Adams. Maybe I should start since I made that point in
my testimony.
The answer is yes and yes. What is crucial here is that the
Foreign Service is changing, and as everybody at the table has
said, the world is changing. And so how we engage as a Nation
in statecraft is, therefore, changing. And the old model and
culture of ``report, represent, and negotiate'' does not work
even for the Foreign Service officers at the State Department.
And because of the damage amply demonstrated in your chart, the
new culture of managing contracts does not work very well at
USAID either.
The reality is that for both of these organizations and
more broadly, we need to recruit a new generation, people who
are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Who are
prepared to be both managers and diplomats, both planners and
implementers, and be engaged in the field. And if you put all
of those pieces together, it means both organizations need, and
I think our report is going to make this point very strongly--
to recruit, train, promote, incentivize, and cross-assign the
personnel who promote our foreign policy interests.
Can they do this at the mid-career level? Yes, they can.
The Foreign Service Act that was passed in 1980 is both simple
and explicit on this question. It is completely possible and
within the range of the law to recruit people at the mid-career
level and to recruit them very broadly with respect to
specialization. And that is important. If you wait until junior
officers come in with that skill set, it is going to be a very
long time before they get to the level where they are defining
and implementing programs, making a difference in the field. So
you want to start fast, hit the ground running, and be bringing
in people at the mid-career level.
The obstacles are in the personnel rules in the two
departments. But even USAID has moved beyond that. They are
deliberately setting out explicitly, as part of the expansion
you heard described earlier by Richard Greene, to recruit
people at the mid-career level with the technical and field
specializations that they need. So it is entirely possible.
This is simply an act of will in the two departments to proceed
down that road.
Senator Akaka. Thank you. Ms. Richard.
Ms. Richard. I agree with what Dr. Adams said. I also might
point out that the staff of the State Department and USAID are
made up of political appointees, Foreign Service officers,
civil servants, Foreign Service nationals, some nationals of
the countries in which embassies are located who are the
locals. And the U.S. Agency for International Development, it
has a Foreign Service, has civil servants, and, of course,
there are consultants and occasionally people on loan, such as
people from the Pentagon.
What has happened is that when any kind of change is
proposed, because of the environment in which everyone is
working, there are always concerns that the change will be
negative, that somebody is going to lose something. There are
going to be less benefits or less pay or less opportunities.
And this is not a good way to run organizations. There has to
be more working together to build an esprit de corps and to
take advantage of a very diverse workforce and really pull out
people's best talents and have them move quickly into new areas
to confront new challenges. And because, in part, I think the
personnel always feel under threat that something is about to
be lost, they are very defensive to any kind of reforms or
changes. And I think that there has to be a better look at what
is needed and modeling a staff that can then address what is
needed.
Thank you.
Senator Akaka. Mr. Worthington.
Mr. Worthington. The U.S. nonprofit community has over
200,000 people working in development around the world, and we
bring in experts from the United Nations, from the private
sector, and other areas. The idea that you would bring in mid-
to senior-level people in the U.S. Government makes a lot of
sense. The challenge is: Are these jobs that people want to
take? Are these jobs that are interesting?
We are looking at the type of people that are coming in
this new increase of Foreign Service officers. Now, many of
them are coming from a background of a significant interest in
transitional States and post-war conflict. So when we look at
the world, it is not necessarily through development, but it is
looking at the world through a lens of war.
Our challenge is we need to bring in people who are also
looking at the world through a lens of how do you improve the
well-being of people and do so at the mid-career level and, in
essence, be competitive with other types of jobs like our
community where there is much more flexibility with private
resources.
Senator Akaka. Dr. Hyman.
Mr. Hyman. Thank you, Senator. I was in USAID when we went
back and forth between the very two things you are talking
about. You can do it; definitely, you can do it. USAID did it.
You get into this list of alphabetical acronyms. They were
called NEPs, new entry professionals, to distinguish them from
the earlier group, which were called IDIs, international
development interns, or something like that.
So what happened, of course, was that the people who came
in at the bottom, so to speak, or earlier in their career got
lower ranks. The people who were brought in later for so-called
more professional got higher ranks. So the people that had been
in the Foreign Service had served overseas for X numbers of
years were suddenly confronted with Mary or John who comes in
at a higher rank than they are in without having been in any of
these countries.
That can be overcome, but there are problems of managing
personnel with bringing in people at higher levels. Definitely
it can be managed. In my personal opinion, I think the best way
to do this would be to have an agreement between the Congress
and the Administration that we are going to go on a certain
path and we are going to stay on it, we are not going to go
back and forth.
After the so-called NEP experience, now Administrator Fore
is going back to the earlier model, bringing people in at a
lower level. So the people coming in now are saying, ``Well,
why don't I get a GS-3 rank? Why do I get a GS-6 rank? I am not
any worse than so-and-so.''
It seems to me that this going back and forth and back and
forth is part of the morale problem in USAID and other
agencies, and that really gets, Senator Voinovich, to your
point earlier about initiatives.
One of the recommendations I made here is that the Congress
resist this continuous attempt to have new initiatives with the
new mark of whoever has come in at the top. Whether it is the
President, the Secretary of State, or the USAID Administrator,
there is a flood of new initiatives in almost every
Administration, and many of them do not live long through the
Administration, let alone enduring through the next
Administration.
The Foreign Service and the civil service bounce back and
forth between every new initiative, and it seems to me Congress
could do a great service by avoiding or trying to resist or
asking for resistance of constantly having new programs, new
directions, new personnel systems, new program initiatives,
etc.
That said, going back to the point that was made earlier,
one of the reasons that USAID and the U.S. Government, I think,
are going to have a more complicated assistance structure than,
let's say, the U.K. system, the U.K. system is devoted to
poverty reduction. As Mr. Worthington said, he thinks that is
the primary thing for our assistance program. If it is, you may
very well be able to create a U.K.-type structure. But our
structure has a multiplicity of purposes and a multiplicity of
functions. If we do not want to do that, fine, then we should
limit our assistance program to poverty reduction. That is not
where it is now. It has now got anti-terrorism dimensions; it
has state foreign policy dimensions. It has a whole variety of
things that are all engaged in the way in which projects are
put together. If you have that kind of complicated function,
then you are going to get a complicated form as well. It is
just like regular architecture. Organizational architecture,
form ought to follow function. And we have a complicated series
of functions and, therefore, need to look at what forms will
best achieve those kind of functions. And I think that is where
I think you were driving at, Senator Voinovich.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Hyman. As I said, I
had two questions. Now, the last one, you heard Mr. Greene give
his top three recommendations for improving the foreign
assistance bureaucracy, and I am going to ask the panel to
submit--each of you submit your three top recommendations in
writing to the Subcommittee.
Now I would like to ask Senator Voinovich for any questions
or final remarks.
Senator Voinovich. I just think this has been a great
hearing, and I really appreciate all the work that you all have
done, and your organizations. There is this tendency when you
come in to try and do new things and build on--it is hard to
say we want to have--I will just remember back when my
predecessor was Governor Celeste, and he put a lot of money in
``Ohio is the heart of it all.'' And my people came in and
said, ``We have got to change this.'' I said, ``What do you
mean we have to change it?'' ``Well, we have to have our own
thing.'' And I said, ``This State spent probably millions of
dollars in hustling this `Ohio is the heart of it all.' Why
would we want to change that?''
And then he put in place the Edison Centers. ``Well, we
have got to have our own centers.'' I said, ``These things are
working. Let's take what he has and let's build on it and make
it better.''
That is why I think it is real important that you guys keep
doing what you are doing so that we get this information over
to whoever the next President is and they do not come in and
try and reinvent the wheel, and take the best of your thoughts
and put it together and also do a good job of coming up to the
Hill and lobbying and try to get some of our colleagues to
understand that some of these earmarks and so on really are not
helping the situation and we are not getting the best return on
our investment because it does not allow us to put our dollars
where they are needed most. For example, the international de-
mining group. And it is amazing to me how much money they are
leveraging today. We put in, I think, $10 million, and they
leverage another $10 million. And, frankly, they could even
leverage more than that if we did the match. So there is this
concept of how you can take your dollars and maximize them and
get a bigger return on your investment is extremely important.
That is why this public-private partnership I think is so
important.
The last thing I would say is that Senator Akaka and I have
been trying for the last 10 years to deal with the issue of
human capital, and we are talking about bringing people in from
the middle level. Do you all believe that we have enough
flexibilities to make that happen? Because I think the last
time we looked, we only bring in about 13 percent of the people
who work for the Federal Government that come in at a middle-
level area. One of the things that we did was leave. If you
work for the Federal Government--maybe it is different in the
State Department. You are here for a year, you get 2 weeks. You
are here for 3 years, you get 3 weeks. And then you are here
for 15 years, and you can get a month. And we have changed that
situation. We have changed the paying off of loans--well, that
does not so much deal with people coming in at mid-level. But
do you think we have enough flexibilities there to go after
some of these folks?
Mr. Adams. My sense, Senator, is that you do. The issue
that Jerry Hyman put his finger on is real; that is, you are
dealing with an existing workforce and you have brought most of
them in at a non-mid-career level and created an expectation
about how they will move up through the career ranks. And,
inevitably, the management challenge in doing what you are
recommending--and I think it is highly desirable--is managing
the career expectations of the people who are there.
One of the keys to this is on the budgetary side, ensuring
that we are expanding what we are expecting of the
organizations. And expanding their funding. We are going to
recommend in the Stimson Report, an expansion of the number of
positions, which will require more funding. More positions and
more funding will help alleviate some of the tension Jerry
Hyman is talking about. But it definitely is an HR management
issue to ensure that as you recompose the workforce and bring
in the skill sets you need, you are not creating resentment and
ill will in the existing architecture.
It is a management challenge, but my sense is in law there
is virtually no impediment. The challenge is going to be in
managing the regulations and structures in the HR processes in
the organizations.
Senator Voinovich. You are going to have to bring in
somebody who is really good in terms of HR or identify somebody
already in the shop that can really understand that.
Mr. Adams. There are two keys here. One is bringing in
somebody with the level of expertise and knowledge and
credibility to run the foreign assistance operation, someone
who really knows what they are doing. It is not just another
political appointee. Somebody with real skills and talents. In
my judgment, 75 percent of this is an HR issue, and that means
bringing in somebody who has the real skill to do this HR job.
Senator Voinovich. Thanks very much.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much. I would like to thank
all of our witnesses for being here today. There are many
challenges that face our foreign assistance bureaucracy, not
the least of which is, as we have been talking about, human
capital. I believe that it is vitally important to establish a
clear national strategy to not only guide our foreign aid
efforts, but also to facilitate the effective management,
coordination, and staffing so that our national interests can
be attained.
This Subcommittee will continue to focus on reforms of
critical aspects of our national security. Our next hearing
will explore the evolution of challenges to the public
diplomacy bureaucracy.
The hearing record will be open for 1 week for additional
statements or questions from other Members of the Subcommittee.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:29 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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