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Development community gears up for State Department review

Development-community leaders are gearing up for the release of the first peek at the State Department’s overall policy review, amassing their forces in case the news is not of their liking. The interim report for State’s first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review has been delayed a few times, but now outside observers are being told ...

Development-community leaders are gearing up for the release of the first peek at the State Department's overall policy review, amassing their forces in case the news is not of their liking.

Development-community leaders are gearing up for the release of the first peek at the State Department’s overall policy review, amassing their forces in case the news is not of their liking.

The interim report for State’s first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review has been delayed a few times, but now outside observers are being told the release is imminent. They are also being told to brace for some bad news (or at leas what they would consider bad news) about the direction the review is headed in terms of development organization and policy.

"We should prepare for the fact that we won’t like some aspects of the report," read an email sent out by an umbrella group that is helping to coordinate the community in its dealings with State. "I don’t know what those parts will be, but this underscores the need for us to organize our response in a timely manner."

The development community’s main concerns include whether or not the U.S. Agency for International Development will have its policy planning staff and budget control restored, what the review will say about the future of USAID contracting, and what the announced "integration" of the diplomacy and development missions will mean in practice.

It’s not clear that the interim report will tackle all of these issues, but the policy-planning staff is already being reconstructed and our sources say that control of the budget will probably stay with Deputy Secretary Jack Lew.

What we are hearing about the interim report is that is that it will explain the broader issues in question without getting into actual recommendations. It will also explain the narrower focus of the second phase, after which "actionable" recommendations will be announced.

The schedule is to release the full draft report in late summer and the final report in September, according to the email.

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

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