USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah unveiled a broad strategy for elevating and strengthening the agency at a U.S. Global Leadership Coalition-hosted event yesterday.  Shah emphasized the development of USAID staff as "development entrepreneurs," empowered to innovate and take risks to increase impact; the power of market forces to create sustainable change; and strict accountability to the American people.

Substantively, Shah described a focus on the Millennium Development Goals, country-owned models of growth, expanding USAID's in-house science and technology capacity, and sustainable development in areas of conflict.

To implement these changes, USAID will be unveiling a new policy bureau and in-house budgeting capacity in the next few weeks.  Beginning in June, the agency will begin to reform procurement to scrutinize unit costs, build internal capacity for program design and evaluation, support in-country capacity building, and emphasize transparency in assigning contracts.  In the coming months, talent and human resources management reforms will begin to take advantage of the skills of Foreign Service national staff and build internal technical capacity.  Monitoring, evaluation, and transparency improvements, focused on rigorous data collection, will be implemented in the fall.

Shah views these changes as a key step in improving relationships with stakeholders in the development community, in other U.S. government agencies, and on Capitol Hill.  Increased planning and evaluation capability would increase USAID's ability to learn from other agencies and organizations, and to better understand when they need to ask for help.  Further, Shah as transparency and ability to demonstrate quantifiable results, he said, would be rewarded with more flexible resources.

Full video of the event can be viewed on the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition website at www.usglc.org.