USAID bars its own experts from agency closeout jobs

The officials in charge of shutting down what remains of the U.S. Agency for International Development are looking to hire additional contractors to complete the closeout process. There’s one big stipulation in the job description, though — the external consulting firms that hire and onboard new employees on the U.S. government’s behalf are prohibited from recruiting anyone with previous USAID experience. An internal “activity memo” obtained by Devex spells out the thinking behind this highly unusual hiring restriction — and the plan to bring on more contract staff even as Trump administration officials insist USAID is “dead and gone.” “By recruiting a fresh workforce, the Agency aims to avoid the risk of impaired objectivity — a conflict of interest that occurs when former personnel are tasked with auditing, closing, or settling actions they may have previously initiated or overseen,” reads the memo. It was sent by Matthew Dickinson, who currently holds the title of chief terminations officer at USAID, to Eric Ueland, who is “performing the duties of administrator and chief operating officer” at the agency. The memo, dated Jan. 7 of this year, seeks Ueland’s approval for moving forward with a contract solicitation and for “precluding the new contractor from hiring anyone with previous USAID experience.” Ueland signed it two days later. The “Request for Quote,” which was issued on Jan. 16 to solicit bids on the contract, states: “For all positions under this contract, the Contractor must preclude anyone with previous USAID experience from recruitment.” The “Institutional Support for USAID Closeout Contract” has a ceiling of $199 million and allows for repeated extensions after a “base period” that runs until March 7. The contract will require an “initial obligation” amount of $6.7 million, and the memo details that if the timeline stretches beyond March 7, USAID will require additional funding to shut itself down. The investment in training new contract staff ensures that the final closeout of taxpayer-funded obligations is handled by a team with no prior experience in the matters being settled.” --— USAID’s internal activity memo While the vast majority of USAID’s roughly 10,000 employees worldwide were terminated last year, there is still a group of several dozen foreign service and civil service officers who were retained to carry out a variety of contracting, administrative, and human resources-related tasks associated with dismantling USAID’s roughly $40 billion a year operation. All of those remaining USAID staff are expected to be severed from the agency on or around March 7, Randy Chester, the USAID vice president at the American Foreign Service Association, told Devex. Instead of keeping them on, Trump administration officials overseeing the process have chosen to award a contract to a company that will hire “institutional support contractors,” though these hires will have to be trained on USAID’s rules, regulations, and procedures. “While the transition to a new contractor workforce requires additional US funds and an initial investment in training and a period of workforce transition, these costs are being required to maintain the perception of an independent and objective closeout process by those who are most sceptical of USAID staff,” Dickinson wrote in the memo. “The investment in training new contract staff ensures that the final closeout of taxpayer-funded obligations is handled by a team with no prior experience in the matters being settled,” it reads. The plan to hire additional contractors to assist with the closeout and to bar people with USAID experience from the hiring process was previously reported by The Guardian. The contents of the internal memo justifying that decision have not been previously reported. Chester of AFSA told Devex that the move serves as “further proof of the incompetence of the people running the show now.” “If you want people who are experts in the field to do something that’s required, you hire those experts. Those are the people who are currently doing that job,” he said. “That’s who I would want … Not someone off the street that you’re going to have to spend thousands of dollars and weeks training.” He added that the ethical requirements placed on USAID contracting officers are “extreme” and the suggestion that foreign service officers wouldn’t act objectively is “complete bunk.” “I can’t imagine the conditions they’re working under,” he said. “I can’t imagine being there and being told, ‘I don’t trust you.’” Chester said that the plan to hire new institutional contractors to perform closeout duties also lays bare the administration’s mishandling of the USAID “reduction in force” that it carried out last year. Done correctly, this would have required identifying the categories of employment that the agency still needed, and then using the information to assemble a roster of officials who should be retained, he said. Instead, they either failed to identify their remaining workforce needs or terminated staff despite them. He predicted that this new contract solicitation will likely add fuel to legal actions challenging the mass termination. The uncertain contract timeline and additional spending requirement show that “it is harder to actually close an agency than Project 2025 and MAGA folks ever understood, and it comes with significant costs,” a former senior USAID official who served during Trump’s first administration told Devex, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political constituency. “It is clear that the Trump administration's biggest fear is employees who are smarter than they are,” the former official added. “DOGE was a massive failure, and this just highlights it. Spending will go on for years, and the worst part is that the spending won't accomplish anything.” The State Department did not respond to an inquiry from Devex. USAID’s press office was eliminated.