Other Offices And Bureaus
Table of Contents
Office of Administrator
The next conservative Administration should leave in place the current structure of two presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Deputy Administrators, one for Policy and one for Management. The Deputy Administrators and the Chief of Staff must be individuals with extensive previous service in the executive branch, ideally at foreign-affairs agencies, and be fluent in the language and practice of federal procurement.
Bureau for Foreign Assistance
The USAID Administrator should be renamed as Director of Foreign Assistance (F) at the Department of State with the rank of Deputy Secretary. It should reorient the bulk of F staff from focusing on the formulation of the annual President’s budget proposal to the execution of already appropriated resources.
This should include eliminating the duplicative Mission and Bureau Resource Requests; speeding up the availability of appropriations by delivering to Congress within 60 days the report required by Section 653(a) of the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA); and fast-tracking the approval of Congressional Notifications (CNs) and other pre-obligation requirements.
Management Bureau
A political appointee should be USAID’s Senior Procurement Executive and Director of the agency’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance (M/ OAA). Political appointees with the appropriate credentials (including warrants) should be placed within M/OAA, and the agency should exercise its authority to engage qualified experts from other federal departments and agencies and outside of government (if they are free of conflicts of interest) on the Technical Commit- tees that review applications for USAID’s contract and grant competitions. The Administration should change the designation of USAID’s Competition Advocate to an individual favorable to innovative types of contracts that can reduce the aid oligopoly’s grip on the agency.
Office of Human Capital and Talent Management. As soon as possible after Inauguration Day, the next conservative Administration should name a political appointee as USAID’s Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) and Director of the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management. USAID’s White House Liaison must be an individual with substantial experience with federal personnel sys- tems. The White House Office of Presidential Personnel should allow the USAID Administrator to explore with counterparts at the Office of Personnel Management whether the agency could hire personnel under both the Administratively Deter- mined authority and Schedule C of the Excepted Service of the Federal Civil Service. USAID should be one of the agencies to pilot-test a reinstated Executive Order 13957,16 which created a Schedule F within the Excepted Service, and should aggres- sively recruit and place candidates into term-limited positions under Schedule A of the Excepted Service (especially veterans). The new CHCO should examine how the existing members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) at USAID should be reworked throughout the agency and should institute an SES Mobility Program to encourage the regular rotation of senior career leaders, including through details to other departments and agencies.
Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning. The next conservative Admin- istration should shift the policy functions of the Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning (PPL) to the Office of Budget and Resource Management (BRM), located in the Office of the Administrator. It should rename BRM the Office of Budget, Policy, and Resource Management (BPRM) and staff the policy team with political appointees.
The Administration should also move the responsibility for reviewing and processing proposed changes in USAID’s policy bible, the Automated Directives System (ADS), from the Management Bureau to the new BPRM. Even before these changes, the Assistant Administrator for PPL should decree an immediate freeze on changes in the ADS and agencywide policy documents to allow for the priority publication of amendments to reflect the new Administra- tion’s viewpoint. All major agency policies should be reviewed and amended or withdrawn within the new Administration’s first calendar year in office.
Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs
The next conservative Administration should invest no more than 10 percent of USAID’s allocation of Administratively Determined politically appointed positions in the Bureau for Legislative and Public Affairs. A priority for these positions (combined with hires under Schedule A) should be the review and editing of the agency’s public-facing web pages and social media accounts to eliminate material that does not conform to the new Administration’s policies. The agency should accelerate the review of Con- gressional Notifications within LPA and publish all CNs and congressional reports. To ensure consistency and clarity of public messaging, LPA should gain direct authority over the communications staff scattered through USAID’s various Bureaus and Offices. LPA should expand its public-facing efforts to include con- servative allies that are active in global development and humanitarian aid work, including industry groups, nonprofits, trade associations, foundations, and advo- cacy organizations, and correspondingly reduce the aid industrial complex’s grip on USAID’s corporate relationships.
Office of General Counsel. Along with the Director of M/OAA, the General Counsel is one of the two or three most important positions at USAID and should be a priority for immediate appointments. Because proper legal interpretation of executive orders and internal USAID policy is crucial, the next conservative Administration should recruit and appoint a commanding team of Schedule C attorneys in the Office of the General Counsel (OGC). Within weeks of Inau- guration Day, OGC should issue clear guidance on the eligibility of faith-based organizations for USAID funding.
Office of Budget Resources and Management.
The Director of Budget Resources and Management should be a political appointee empowered as part of the Administrator’s senior management team. BRM’s highest priorities should be to prepare the report required by Section 653(a) according to the Administrator’s guidance, institute a fast-track process for the submission of Congressional Notifica- tions, and identify already appropriated resources to reprogram immediately to fund the new Administration’s priorities. The next conservative Administration should consider prioritizing the placing of young political appointees in BRM over LPA. Bureau for Democracy, Development, and Innovation. A key outcome of the transformation of USAID undertaken during the Trump Administration, the Bureau for Democracy, Development, and Innovation (DDI) is the home for most of the agency’s non-health, nonhumanitarian funding as well as almost all of its sectoral appropriations directives, including those that reflect the pet projects of individual Members of Congress. The Bureau is the policy and financial nexus at USAID for most of the Biden Administration’s radical priorities in foreign assis- tance, including gender, climate change, and the promotion of identity-based politics. On the positive side, DDI is also the Bureau in charge of areas that will be crucial to a reorientation of USAID, including trade, economic growth, inno- vation, partnerships with the private sector, and the agency’s relationship with communities of faith. The next conservative Administration should make the rapid staffing of key DDI positions a high priority. Besides the Senate-confirmed Assistant Administrator, the Directors of each of the Centers and Hubs in the Bureau will need political leadership. Almost every one of the agencywide policies that cover DDI’s areas of responsibility will need to be edited or rewritten entirely as soon as possible. The next conservative Administration should harvest DDI’s central appropriations to fund new priorities, especially working with ethnic and religious minorities and faith-based organizations and joint ventures with the private sector in education and energy. All DDI programs should issue funding opportunities restricted to new and underutilized partners modeled on the NPI.