What's left, but more importantly, what's ahead for USAID?

Has the dust settled? That’s the question on everyone’s minds as the culling of the U.S. Agency for International Development programs and the agency’s merger into the State Department show tentative signs of completion. So what’s next? That’s what panelists at a recent Devex Pro briefing debated, with some recommending people move past the initial chaos of USAID’s dismantling to focus on the way forward, while others cautioned that the chaos is still very much in play — and indicative of what may lie ahead. “We can talk about how this change was done. Was it right? Was it too blunt? We can all argue about that. What I tried to do is focus on where we're at. How do we get out of this, and how do we get back to using these tools we have?” said former U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, a Republican from Florida. “There were some great things in USAID that they did — the education, humanitarian, and the agricultural work, and so let's focus on those good things and then incorporate the tools … to project the vision that [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio had about making America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. And I think moving forward, this is going to be a good thing,” he added. Yoho noted that foreign aid reforms have been tried for years, but implementation has been slow and easily sidetracked when political power changes hands every few years. “So as crude or blunt as this was, I think it's an opportunity to rebuild these programs and make them stronger so they're more effective and more efficient,” Yoho said. “Let's get back to honoring the contracts that were canceled. Let's get people back and employed where they need to be, and get rid of the nonsense in some of these programs. And I think if we do that, you're going to see this move rather quickly.” Not everyone agrees it will be possible to move on so easily after the rapid-fire, blunt-force dismantling of thousands of USAID programs over the last two months, which includes ongoing confusion as to which of those programs have been truly terminated and truly kept intact. “One of the challenges is you can't just stop and start programming. Things like HIV and AIDS, the minute people are off their treatment, they build up resistance,” said Lisa Bos, vice president of global development policy, advocacy, and learning for InterAction. “We have lost expertise and staff, not just at USAID, but in some of these countries where you had locally employed staff at NGOs who are not going to come back. I think you'll have local organizations shut down. I think there will be an immense distrust of the United States as a partner, where you already see countries turning to China. It's because we have proven ourselves to not be reliable, to not keep our word. So I think whatever comes next, there has to be an acknowledgement that turning things on is not going to be easy,” she said. “There's been a huge inefficiency in the way that this has been all rolled out because of what we have lost, in terms of gains that were made before, and in terms of expertise that really was built over years and decades. Bringing that back? I doubt how we can do that,” Bos added. While the execution is debatable, there was wide agreement that, ultimately, reforms were overdue. “We saw in Africa, China becoming the preferred development partner of many countries that we have provided billions of dollars in foreign assistance to. So certainly, it was time to say what kind of reforms are needed in our administration and our use of soft power instruments and foreign aid,” said Patrick Fine, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “It needs to be less fragmented. There needs to be greater coordination under the auspices of the secretary of state so it's lashed up to our foreign policy. We need to understand how this use of taxpayer money, of public funds, is benefiting American interests. And there was structural change that was required,” he added. “You really have to accept the notion that we have not … accomplished the objectives that we all collectively share in the development community. And so we need to figure out a new model for doing this,” said Jim Richardson, executive director of the Office of Secretary Mike Pompeo. To that end, a key proposal that Richardson has long supported is having an overarching figure who can take responsibility for the portfolios of both USAID and the State Department to “bring cohesiveness into the development conversations … ensuring no duplications, ensuring alignment and success,” he said. “So first, we have to have the leadership structure in place to do that. The second place you do need to have [is] this technical expertise that the State Department … [does] not have,” he added. “So if we're going to focus on monitoring, evaluation, impact outcomes, we want to actually make sure that we have a good return on our investment for our resources — that's what USAID technical staff really brings to the equation. So making sure that we are integrating those technical capacities into the new structures is super important.”