What USAID's new biodata form means for pay equity

BARCELONA — Implementing partners are still processing the changes made by the U.S. Agency for International Development to its “Contractor Employee Biographical Data Sheet” but the revised form is expected to help tackle gender equity across the sector. As of Sept. 9, bidding organizations no longer need to provide historic data on salary and consultancy rates for personnel included on their proposals — information that has previously been thought to perpetuate the gender pay gap. This revision is just one aspect of wider reform efforts but “is significant because it’s the way we’ve been doing business for 30-plus years,” said Mark Walther, director of acquisition and assistance for USAID’s bureau of management. Questions had been raised by the contracting community and internally, through research groups such as Women in Aid & Development and Young Professionals in Aid, around the relevance of the data and its impact on pay equity. “The prior reliance on salary history was in contrast to a market-based, market-value approach,” Walther explained, and often disadvantaged professionals who had been out of the workforce for some time due to family commitments or for other personal reasons. Simone Scudder, director of recruitment at Chemonics, is excited by the recent changes and believes the new form should eliminate some of the issues around pay disparities, which can be “pretty systemic” and persist throughout a person’s career. “It’s been known through several studies and research that there are salary disparities across gender groups, ethnicities, races, nationalities — pretty much any group that’s not dominant,” she explained. Once an individual starts on a lower salary, they may find that their salary is kept lower than the market would determine as they continue in their career. The new approach should ensure that rates for local staff are market-driven, and open up the competition to candidates from other industries and with more diverse experience, Scudder said. It’s not clear yet how processes will be impacted but Scudder believes the revision will have a positive impact on equity across different groups. In place of salary history, the form now asks contracting organizations or individual consultants to provide “rationale for the salary provided.” “In a nutshell, we would be looking for rationale on how they determined that particular position in the market value,” Walther continued. Years of experience, graduate education, specific experience in overseas development versus domestic — there could be a variety of factors.” One contractor executive, who did not wish to be named to preserve professional ties, agreed that the revised form should effectively address the issue of gender equity. However, there is still some uncertainty as to how individual contracting officers will treat the information provided and there needs to be a common understanding of what is meant by “market value,” the source said. Contractors have expressed concerns about how market-based salary scales are implemented for local staff in different countries. Some have raised the question of eliminating the forms completely and finding another common framework to analyze and compare this information. Following approval in May, the changes have been brought in quite suddenly, said the contractor. This is in part because tackling gender equity is a priority for USAID but also because the Office of Management and Budget ruled that the agency did not need to seek public comment on the revisions. So, while professionals in the sector have been raising the wider issue of gender equity, implementing partners were not particularly involved in the discussions that formed the new policy. Walther explained that the recommendations for the form were based on a year-long review process and consultations with different partners. But he added that questions are expected and that the agency is gathering feedback. FAQs will likely be developed or additional guidance issued as needed. “There’s still a lot of work to be done,” he said.