Shah doles out tough love for USAID in policy speech
At a town-hall meeting on the campus of the George Washington University this afternoon, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will lay out a broad plan for reforming the organization, which has seen years of depleted resources and diminished morale. In the speech, Shah will roll out the overarching themes that will guide USAID reform under his ...
At a town-hall meeting on the campus of the George Washington University this afternoon, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will lay out a broad plan for reforming the organization, which has seen years of depleted resources and diminished morale.
At a town-hall meeting on the campus of the George Washington University this afternoon, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will lay out a broad plan for reforming the organization, which has seen years of depleted resources and diminished morale.
In the speech, Shah will roll out the overarching themes that will guide USAID reform under his tenure. The four "core areas" that USAID will focus on going forward are: recommitting USAID to the Millennium Development Goals, investing in country-owned models of growth and development success, developing and delivering scientific and technological breakthroughs, and utilizing USAID expertise in conflict settings.
"Most of all, we need to change internally," Shah will tell his employees, according to his prepared remarks. "We need to reform or eliminate processes that inhibit our success, and truly treat development as a discipline. We need to take risks, acknowledge mistakes, and harness the passion that brought us to this field."
Shah will dole out some tough love for the agency, pressing reform as an urgent priority:
Some of you may have heard what Senator Leahy said at the hearing where I presented USAID’s budget request. He didn’t mince words. He said that USAID was not living up to its potential. And he said, quote: "USAID needs to change its culture, and change the way it does business." One of our biggest champions, someone who has supported this agency throughout its history, someone deeply committed to development made matters clear: either USAID reforms itself, or USAID ceases to exist. So it’s been made pretty clear to me — our time to change is now, and our time to change is short.
Shah will also formally announce the restitution of USAID’s policy planning shop (though that has been ongoing for months and has already been well reported). Whether or not USAID will get its budget authority back as well is not yet decided, part of the ongoing policy review led by USAID and the State Department.
For a sneak peak of how the White House is thinking about overall development reform, at least as of two weeks ago, read this.
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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