USAID Reform: Efforts Address Most Key Practices but Could Improve in Performance Assessment and Strategic Workforce Planning
Released: 2019-09-11T00:00:00

Letter

Background

Initial USAID Reform Efforts

In response to Executive Order 13781, USAID established the Transformation Task Team (T3) in June 2017 to plan and lead the agency’s reform efforts. As noted in a previous GAO report, USAID launched several internal reform efforts and participated in a joint State- USAID redesign process during mid-2017, which resulted in a joint reform plan. USAID also developed a supplemental reform plan that focused on issues internal to USAID. State and USAID submitted these plans to OMB in September 2017. In January 2018, USAID suspended its participation in the joint State–USAID redesign process and continued to plan and implement its own internal reforms.

According to USAID, its reform efforts are intended to support its bilateral partners to become more self-reliant and capable of leading their own development, with the ultimate goal of ending the need for foreign assistance. To achieve this goal, USAID identified five objectives, referred to as “desired outcomes,” as the basis for its reform efforts. The five objectives are: (1) establish metrics and approaches to help host country recipients of assistance become more self-reliant; (2) restructure bureaus and offices to strengthen the organization’s core capabilities; (3) advance national security interests; (4) improve human capital processes; and (5) maximize taxpayer investments in foreign assistance.

According to USAID officials, OMB generally approved the USAID reform plans and associated projects by March 2018. Figure 1 shows the key events in the initial phases of USAID’s reform efforts up to the point OMB provided this approval.

Key Practices for Agency Reform Efforts

In developing our June 2018 report to assist Congress, OMB, and agencies in assessing agency reform plans, we reviewed our prior work on key practices for organizational transformations; collaboration; government streamlining and efficiency; fragmentation, overlap, and duplication; and high risk and other long-standing agency management challenges. The resulting report includes 58 key questions to aid in assessing reform efforts. (See app. II for a complete list of the 58 key questions.) The questions are organized into four broad categories and 12 subcategories, as shown in table 1. These subcategories encompass the key practices that we used to assess USAID’s reform efforts. For the purposes of this report, we determined that the subcategory of Workforce Reduction Strategies was not applicable to our assessment because USAID is not undertaking workforce reductions as part of its reform effort.

USAID Has Completed 19 Reform Projects, Is Implementing 12, and Is Planning One Other as of July 2019

USAID’s reform efforts consist of a total of 32 reform projects—31 projects being implemented by USAID’s Transformation Task Team (T3) and an additional Human Resources Transformation project that predates USAID’s other reform efforts. As shown in table 2, as of July 2019, USAID has completed 19 projects and is implementing 12 others, all of which USAID intends to complete by 2021. The task team also has one project still in the planning phase.

In order to develop and implement the 32 reform projects, USAID has identified approximately $33 million in estimated costs associated with its reforms up through April 2019. According to USAID, this total includes about $3 million to develop the T3 reform efforts in fiscal year 2018 and approximately $6 million to implement its reform efforts over a period of 2 years, which USAID assumes will cover fiscal years 2019 and 2020. In addition, USAID estimated that, as of April 2019, it has expended about $24 million in fiscal year 2017–2019 funds for human resource efforts that are associated with its ongoing Human Resources Transformation project.

Reform Efforts Generally Addressed Nearly All Key Practices, but Gaps Exist Related to Performance Measures and Strategic Workforce Planning

USAID Generally Addressed Nine Key Practices for Planning and Implementing Agency Reforms

As shown in table 3, USAID’s reform efforts generally addressed nine of the key practices that we previously identified as critical to the success of agency reforms, and its reform efforts partially addressed two others.

Determining the Appropriate Role of the Federal Government

USAID determined the appropriate role of the federal government by considering the private sector and governments’ ability to manage responsibility for and invest their own resources into foreign development and humanitarian assistance programs. Our prior work shows it is important for agencies engaged in reforms to reexamine the role of the federal government in carrying out specific missions and programs, policies, and activities by reviewing their continued relevance and determining whether the federal government is best suited to provide that service or if it can be provided by some other level of government or sector more efficiently or effectively. In line with the USAID Administrator’s vision of ending the need for foreign assistance, USAID has developed several projects under its “Journey to Self-Reliance” objective to increase bilateral partner countries’ ability to plan, finance, and implement solutions to solve their own development challenges.

Beginning in mid-2017, USAID launched a process to identify a set of third-party metrics for assessing a country’s level of self-reliance. In June 2018, USAID announced the identification of 17 metrics to capture a country’s overall commitment and capacity for self-reliance. The publicly available metrics cover areas such as open and accountable governance; inclusive development; economic policy; and the relative capacities of the government. Starting in fiscal year 2019, USAID produced 136 “country roadmaps,” or tools for measuring each low- and middle-income country’s overall level of self-reliance through its performance on the 17 metrics. USAID is using the country roadmaps as a tool to inform strategic decision-making and resource allocation processes, better focus USAID’s investments, and indicate when a recipient country should be considered for a “strategic transition” to a new partnership model with the U.S. government. For example, USAID identified Albania as a country to pilot this concept, which envisions a new partnership model for a country exhibiting an advanced level of self-reliance and the development of a strategy and plan for how to shift to this new model over time.

In addition, USAID’s “Journey to Self-Reliance” efforts include a project to expand its engagement with the private sector. According to a USAID document, donor agencies are unable to fulfill their goals for sustainable development on their own; in contrast, the private sector has the scale and resources to address the complexity of challenges that developing countries face in becoming self-reliant. In December 2018, USAID released a new “Private Sector Engagement Policy” intended to increase and deepen the collaboration of USAID staff and its partners with the private sector across all areas of the agency’s work.

Involving Employees and Key Stakeholders

USAID involved its employees and key stakeholders in its internal reform efforts. Our prior work has shown that it is important for agencies to directly and continuously involve not only their employees but also key stakeholders in the development of major reforms. USAID has involved its employees in its reform efforts through a variety of means. For example, since 2017, USAID reform leaders have conducted town-hall style meetings with employees in Washington, D.C., and in the field. USAID reform leaders have also briefed senior management, bureau- and office-level leadership, and mission directors about reform efforts. In addition, they have communicated reform updates in the agency’s internal newsletter and have informed employees of reform projects through multiple venues, such as web-based seminars and agency notices.

USAID has also involved key stakeholders, including Congress and State, in its reform efforts. The Administrator has testified before Congress, and USAID officials have briefed Congress about the status of the reform efforts. USAID also submitted reorganization proposals to congressional committees for review and approval. Moreover, USAID engaged with State officials at the senior and working levels on several of its reform projects, including its self-reliance metrics, strategic transitions, and workforce flexibility and mobility projects. However, T3 officials noted that its engagement with State has been hindered by leadership challenges at State, including the lack of a single official or entity at State with responsibility for coordinating with USAID on reform efforts. In our prior work, we found a lapse in State’s leadership focus on reform efforts, and we recommended that State establish a dedicated team to manage the implementation of all reform projects that the Secretary of State decides to pursue.

Using Data and Evidence

USAID’s T3 used various sources of evidence and data to design its reform plans, including recommendations made by external organizations and employee feedback. Our prior work has shown that agencies are better equipped to address management and performance challenges when managers effectively use data and evidence, such as from program evaluations and performance data that provide information on how well a program or agency is achieving its goals.

USAID developed its reform projects based on research and recommendations from various sources, including GAO, the USAID Office of Inspector General, USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, think tanks, and coalitions of organizations focused on international development. For example, USAID’s reform proposal to merge and restructure its Offices of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and Food for Peace into the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance stems, in part, from the results of an in-depth, external study that USAID commissioned in 2016, which entailed significant consultations with internal and external stakeholders as well as data analysis. As another example, USAID’s “Explore Delivery of Human Resources Operations” project was based, in part, on two GAO reports recommending steps to improve the collection of contract data.

In May 2017, State launched a “listening tour” intended to gather ideas and feedback from State and USAID employees on the joint State-USAID redesign process. As a key component of this outreach effort, State hired a contractor to design and administer a confidential, online listening survey, which was sent to State and USAID employees. The listening survey identified pain points, recommendations, and themes that informed USAID’s reform plans. For example, USAID’s projects aimed at reorganizing its structure address a listening tour theme regarding the need to better align its bureau and office functions with USAID’s core mission. In another example, some of USAID’s human resource reform projects address another listening tour theme related to the need to support USAID employees in focusing more of their attention on achieving strategic priorities and less time on inefficient and burdensome administrative tasks.

Addressing Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication

According to USAID, it sought to reduce or better manage fragmentation, overlap, and duplication through multiple reform efforts, including its restructuring projects, its consolidated framework for private sector engagement, and efforts aimed at redefining and rationalizing roles and responsibilities in areas such as countering violent extremism and civilian- military coordination. In our prior work, we have identified actions that agencies could take to achieve greater efficiency or effectiveness by reducing or better managing programmatic fragmentation, overlap, and duplication.

In July and August 2018, USAID sent to various congressional committees for approval a series of initiatives to restructure its bureaus and offices to streamline operations and gain efficiencies. USAID included a proposal to restructure the Office of the Administrator by adding two associate administrators. According to a USAID document, this change would allow the administrator to more effectively manage the complexity of USAID’s work and reduce the number of entities directly reporting to the administrator from 27 to 11. One of the new associate administrators would manage USAID’s relief, response and resilience functions, and the other would manage the agency’s strategy, management, and operations. The congressional committees had not approved all of these proposals as of June 2019, according to USAID.

As of June 2019, according to USAID, the congressional committees had approved five of the seven reorganized bureaus proposed by USAID: the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance; the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security; the Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization; the Bureau for Development, Democracy, and Innovation; and the Bureau for Asia.

Two other proposed bureaus had not yet received approval from all of the committees: the Bureau for Management and the Bureau for Policy, Resources, and Performance. Figure 2 shows USAID’s proposed changes to its headquarters organizational structure.

According to USAID documents, reorganizing these bureaus is in part intended to reduce fragmentation, overlap, and duplication, as well as to make the agency more functionally aligned and field-focused. For example, USAID states that the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance will reduce duplication and fragmentation by unifying humanitarian assistance and eliminating the distinction between food and non-food emergency response, eliminating confusion in the field, and providing beneficiaries and partners with one cohesive USAID platform and voice on humanitarian assistance. As another example, USAID states that the Bureau for Policy, Resources, and Performance would consolidate USAID’s policy, budget, and performance functions, which are currently divided among five bureaus and offices.

Addressing High Risk Areas and Long-Standing Management Challenges

USAID’s reform efforts address several high risk and long-standing management challenges, including a project to specifically address external audit findings and implement auditors’ recommendations. Our prior work noted that reforms improving the effectiveness and responsiveness of the federal government often require addressing long- standing weaknesses in how some federal programs and agencies operate. For example, agency reforms provide an opportunity to address the high risk areas and government-wide challenges that we have called attention to and that are vulnerable to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are in need of transformation.

USAID has undertaken multiple projects to address high risk areas and long-standing challenges. USAID T3’s “Addressing the Audit Backlog” project was specifically designed to review, enhance, and revise USAID’s management of audit engagements and recommendations by eliminating the agency’s backlog of unresolved audit recommendations, developing and implementing practices that would strengthen current programs, and reducing the potential for a future backlog. In this way, USAID intends to save taxpayer dollars by preventing and responding to fraud, mismanagement, wasteful practices, and other challenges identified in the audits. USAID reported that it had eliminated the backlog of unresolved audit recommendations as of May 2018. As of early April 2019, USAID had implemented 75 of GAO’s 86 recommendations from fiscal years 2015 through 2018.

In addition, several other reform projects address high risk areas and long-standing management challenges identified by the USAID Office of Inspector General (OIG). For example, USAID’s “Working in Non- Permissive Environments” project addresses challenges USAID faces working in insecure, inaccessible, or unstable environments. USAID OIG identified developing strategies to work effectively in non-permissive and contingency environments, as one of the five top management challenges for USAID in fiscal year 2017.

Leadership Focus and Attention

USAID’s leadership has demonstrated focus on and attention to the planning and conduct of USAID’s reform efforts. Our prior work shows that a dedicated team of high-performing leaders within the agency should lead organizational transformations, such as agency reforms. USAID has demonstrated leadership at various levels to manage and guide the agency’s reform efforts. For example, USAID’s Administrator first outlined his vision of USAID’s mission as being focused on ending the need for foreign assistance in August 2017, and USAID’s reform efforts are aimed at operationalizing the Administrator’s vision to end the need for foreign assistance. USAID’s Administrator has had visible and continuous involvement in USAID’s reform efforts, including through informing various congressional committees, on multiple occasions, of ongoing developments with USAID’s reform process.

USAID has designated leaders who are responsible for the day-to-day management of USAID’s reform efforts. In June 2017, USAID’s Acting Administrator established the Transformation Task Team (T3) to lead the agency’s response to Executive Order 13781 and the subsequent guidance from OMB. T3 is led by a Coordinator who concurrently serves as the Assistant to the Administrator in USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning, and Learning. The Coordinator told us that he meets with the USAID Administrator on a regular basis to report the status of USAID’s projects. T3 also includes seven deputy coordinators who are accountable for the progress of all of the projects within a desired outcome as well as 24 project managers who lead project implementation. The T3 Coordinator indicated that the size of his team will decrease over time as it hands over management of USAID’s reform projects to bureau-level leaders.

USAID also assigned Senior Leader Champions to each of its reform projects. The champions provide strategic guidance and act as the representational “face and voice” of the project to Congress and the agency. Further, USAID also established a Transformation Advisory Council made up of senior leaders of USAID who have provided strategic guidance to USAID’s reform efforts since October 2017. The council is chaired by the T3 Coordinator and made up of Senior Leader Champions, mission director liaisons, T3 leadership, and other standing members. The Transformation Advisory Council meets to discuss the progress of reform projects, ensure cross-project coordination, and to resolve any duplication or dependencies.

Managing and Monitoring

USAID has developed and maintained a system for managing and monitoring its reform process. We have previously reported that organizational transformations must be carefully and closely managed by developing an implementation plan with key milestones and deliverables to track and communicate implementation progress, among other actions. In May 2018, USAID T3 issued a task order for a contractor to help ensure that USAID has the capacity to manage the planning and implementation of USAID’s reform efforts. The contractor is responsible for providing project and performance management support. Such support included tracking USAID’s reform projects, providing summaries and executive reports on the progress of USAID reform projects, and also knowledge management, including the retention of key documents and information related to project and performance management. The contractor established a data tracking system that contains project end dates and deliverables to track the progress of reform implementation. The system notes which projects are on schedule, delayed, or complete. The contractor has also generated periodic executive reports that outline next steps for implementation reform and provide updates organized by USAID’s five reform objectives.

USAID T3 has developed guidance for transferring responsibility for project implementation to the appropriate bureaus and offices. The guidance details who in the bureau will be responsible and accountable for the project, resources that will be needed to initiate and complete handover of the project, and the future end state of the projects, among other items. As of July 2019, USAID had completed bureau handover plans for 24 T3 reform projects.

USAID has demonstrated transparency over its reform efforts through publicizing reform-related information on its website, including fact sheets on its projects. USAID has also publicly released several of its reform deliverables. For example, USAID made its “Journey to Self-Reliance” portal available on its external website. Through the portal, viewers have access to USAID’s Fiscal Year 2019 Country Roadmaps and can download a wide range of supporting resources on the “Journey to Self- Reliance” effort and the methodology that underpins this effort.

Employee Engagement and Employee Performance Management

USAID’s reform efforts generally addressed two interrelated subcategories of strategic workforce planning by instituting policies to manage employee engagement and to improve employee performance management. These policy initiatives were part of USAID’s broader effort to create a human resource services system that, according to USAID documents, will support a modern workforce in carrying out USAID’s mission. Our prior work has found that increased levels of employee engagement—generally defined as the sense of purpose and commitment employees feel toward their employer and its mission—can lead to better organizational performance and can sustain or increase levels of employee engagement and morale, even as employees weather reorganizations and other difficult external circumstances. Our prior work also found that performance management systems—which are used to plan work and set individual employee performance expectations, monitor performance, develop capacities to perform and to rate and incentivize individual performance—can help the organization manage employees on a daily basis and provide supervisors and employees with the tools they need to improve performance.

USAID developed and began implementing its Human Resources Transformation project prior to the start of the current reform effort led by T3. This project includes objectives and initiatives to both promote employee engagement issues and establish a performance management system during the 5-year transformation. USAID created a project management office to plan and carry out between three and five initiatives associated with each of the Human Resources Transformation project’s objectives and a performance monitoring plan to track the progress of each initiative.

As noted in figure 3, the three Human Resources Transformation objectives and the associated intermediate results called for by the project address both employee engagement and employee performance management issues. For example, Transformation Objective 3, “Agency Culture and Workplace Enhanced,” promotes employee engagement by calling for an agency workplace enhanced by a stronger focus on the culture of accountability with a workforce reflecting the diversity of America’s population. The project is also using Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) data to periodically gauge employees’ feedback and level of engagement on the reform efforts.

Moreover, USAID noted in its April 2019 Human Resources Transformation performance monitoring plan that USAID intends to measure the effectiveness of its efforts to improve employee engagement by assessing the extent to which those efforts increase employees’ positive response rates to human resources service- and delivery-related questions over the generally low baseline rates set by the FEVS 2016 survey response (ranging from 10 percent to 26 percent positive response rates). The monitoring plan noted that USAID expects to increase the positive response rates to these questions on the FEVS to upwards of 74 percent by 2021. Furthermore, one of the intermediate results associated with Transformation Objective 2, “Agency Workforce Prepared for Today and the Future,” includes an effort to establish and uphold a performance management system in areas such as provision of feedback, professional development, and career advancement.

T3 also initiated six projects associated with its “Empower People to Lead” objective that incorporate some of the Human Resources Transformation project efforts to improve employee engagement and implement a performance management system. For example, T3’s project on “Managing Human Capital Talent” is developing new automated tools to transition the paper-based Foreign Service and Civil Service performance management and evaluation processes into online evaluation systems administered electronically. As of July 2019, these tools include an automated Foreign Service assignment tool and a Civil Service performance management system and automated tool.

However, USAID delayed its expected completion date for these Foreign Service and Civil Service tools from the end of December 2018 to March 2019 and August 2019, respectively. Further, T3’s “Leveraging Foreign Service National Talent” project expects changes in job satisfaction- related survey scores, over time, will help USAID measure the success of a reform project aimed at empowering the agency’s Foreign Service Nationals workforce.

USAID Partially Addressed Two Key Reform Practices

USAID Established Goals but Generally Did Not Establish Outcome-Oriented Performance Measures to Gauge the Effectiveness of Efforts

Our prior work indicates that agency reforms should clearly identify what an agency is trying to achieve by establishing outcome-oriented performance measures that enable the agency to assess the extent to which projects are achieving progress toward reform goals. Moreover, T3 guidance states that, as responsibilities for project implementation are transferred to bureau- and office-level units, project-level managers should develop performance indicators to measure progress. While USAID has established high-level goals associated with its reform efforts, such as ending the need for foreign assistance, it has established outcome-oriented performance measures for only four of its reform efforts. Table 4 below provides examples of outcome-oriented performance measures for those four reform projects.

USAID has not established outcome-oriented performance measures that would enable it to gauge the effectiveness of the remaining reform efforts. For example, USAID’s five reform objectives—(1) Journey to Self-Reliance, (2) Strengthen Core Capabilities, (3) Advance National Security, (4) Empower People to Lead, and (5) Respect Taxpayer Investments—are not tied to outcome-oriented performance measures.

In explaining why they had not developed outcome-oriented performance measures for all projects, USAID T3 officials indicated that thus far they have focused their efforts on establishing outputs (e.g., products and services) for the reform projects. Establishing outcome-oriented performance measures for its reform projects would enhance USAID’s ability to assess the effectiveness of its reform efforts.

USAID Is Developing a Strategic Workforce Plan but Lacks the Planning Tools to Justify How Work Force Adjustments Will Help Achieve Its Objectives

USAID documents and officials demonstrate that the agency is developing an agency-wide strategic workforce plan in support of its ongoing reform efforts, but the plan and its associated workforce planning tools were not ready to implement as of July 2019. Strategic workforce planning is an essential activity that an agency needs to conduct to ensure that its human capital program aligns with its current and emerging mission and programmatic goals, and that the agency is able to meet its future needs. Our prior work also indicates the importance of preceding any staff realignments or downsizing with strategic workforce planning so that changed staff levels do not inadvertently result in skills gaps or other adverse effects that could increase use of overtime and contracting.

USAID has taken a number of steps since 2017 to develop an agency- wide strategic workforce plan both prior to and during the current reform effort, including developing staff realignment plans as part of its process for standing up the proposed new bureau structures. However, USAID has not yet developed or implemented the data collection and measurement tools that it has identified as necessary to gauge current workforce capabilities, assess staffing needs arising from the proposed reorganization, and identify ways to close gaps arising from changes in workforce requirements. USAID documents note that such tools could allow USAID to achieve its goal of hiring the right talent, at the right time, for the right duration.

USAID is using both the Human Resource Transformation project and two of T3’s projects to develop a strategic workforce plan and associated tools:

USAID developed and began implementing the Human Resources Transformation project prior to the start of the current reform effort with the expectation that by 2020 the agency would have the organizational structure and workforce characteristics that support achievement of USAID’s mission. This new structure would include an optimally sized workforce with an effective mix of all USAID employee types created through the use of a new workforce planning model.

Project documents note, however, that developing this planning model in turn would require developing a Workforce Planning Tool to define workforce baselines and existing assets, identify future workforce needs, assess gaps, and build capacity where needed. In June 2016, USAID’s 2016–2021 Human Resource Transformation Strategy and Action Plan stated that developing this model would be difficult but nevertheless estimated that implementing this effort would require no more than 2 years. However, USAID officials noted that the Human Resources Transformation efforts did not “fully begin” until 2018.

T3 is implementing two projects associated with its objective titled “Empower People to Lead.” First, T3’s Manage Human Capital Talent project instituted an Employee Portal to provide all direct-hire employees access to their human resources data in one centralized online location. According to USAID documents, this project is also developing for management an automated assignment, performance management, and workforce planning tools, including separate automated planning, performance, and assignment tools for its Civil Service and Foreign Service personnel. The agency originally intended to implement these tools by the end of calendar year 2018. USAID’s April 2019 performance monitoring plan indicates that the tools—particularly the workforce planning model that USAID describes as a human-capital data analytics system to automate various standardized and ad hoc reports and access previously unconnected personnel data sources—will not be available before the end of fiscal year 2019. Second, T3’s “Workforce Flexibility and Mobility” project is focused on implementing a demonstration project, the “Adaptive Personnel Project,” to replace non-career, program- funded positions with an excepted-service management system. The “Adaptive Personnel Project” is to be launched as a pilot project in two USAID bureaus in fiscal year 2020.

As of April 2019, USAID documents and USAID and employee union officials noted that the strategic workforce plan has not yet been completed. Moreover, the April 2019 Human Resources Performance Monitoring Plan notes that the workforce planning tool needed to gauge current capabilities and close gaps is not yet deployed and in use due to competing programmatic and budgetary priorities. In addition, USAID’s T3 project data tracking system indicates that the agency has delayed the implementation of the projects needed to establish baselines and create pilot projects until late 2019 or later in order to focus on broader strategic workforce planning objectives, such as the Strategic Workforce plan and “Adaptive Personnel Project.”

The lack of a strategic workforce plan may limit USAID’s efforts to estimate how its proposed reorganization will affect future staffing needs. For example, USAID officials indicated in 2018 that the proposed reorganization of its headquarters bureaus was intended to be “staff neutral.” Its congressional notification pertaining to this reorganization projected no net increase in its total combined headquarters workforce level of 3,262 employees. Nevertheless, in its Fiscal Year 2020 Congressional Budget Justification, USAID identified a need for 40 additional Civil Service positions to “refocus Washington bureaus and offices toward being effective service providers to the field consistent with the vision of ending the need of foreign assistance.” USAID requested $7.2 million to fund those positions in the restructured bureaus. Without a strategic workforce plan, USAID cannot determine whether its current or planned workforce requirements align with its reform and reorganization objectives.

Conclusions

USAID is entrusted with managing billions of dollars in foreign assistance funding, and USAID leadership recognizes that reforming its internal operations and programming is integral to achieving its mission. In developing and implementing its reform efforts, USAID addressed many key practices that are critical to ensuring a successful agency reform or reorganization, such as using data and evidence and providing leadership focus and attention. Specifically, USAID’s reform efforts generally addressed nine of the 11 key practices we assessed. However, taking additional steps in two areas could further improve its reform efforts. First, while it established goals and desired outcomes for its reform efforts, it has not yet generally established outcome-oriented performance measures necessary to assess the effectiveness and success of these efforts. Second, while USAID has been developing a strategic workforce plan since 2017, it has yet to complete this plan, which includes developing the associated workforce planning tools to identify the staff needed to meet existing and emergent program demands associated with its transformation goals. Addressing these gaps could help USAID better position itself to make long-term and sustainable improvements in its efficiency and effectiveness.

Recommendations for Executive Action

We are making the following two recommendations to USAID: The Administrator of USAID should establish outcome-oriented performance measures to assess the effectiveness of USAID’s reform projects. (Recommendation 1)

The Administrator of USAID should ensure that the agency completes a strategic workforce plan necessary to support its reform efforts. (Recommendation 2)

Agency Comments

We provided a draft of this report to USAID, State, and OMB for review and comment. We received comments from USAID, which are reprinted in appendix IV. USAID concurred with our recommendations. We also received technical comments from USAID and State, which we incorporated in our report as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to the appropriate congressional committees, the Administrator of USAID, the Secretary of State, and other interested parties. In addition, the report is available at no charge on the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 512-6881 or BairJ@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made key contributions to this report are listed in appendix V.

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

We performed our work under the authority of the Comptroller General to conduct work to assist Congress with its oversight responsibilities. This report (1) examines the status of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) reform efforts and (2) assesses the extent to which USAID has addressed key practices and considerations critical to the successful planning and implementation of agency reform efforts. The scope of our review was limited to USAID’s internal reform efforts and did not include government-wide or interagency reform proposals, such as those referenced in the Office of Management and Budget’s Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century report.

For both objectives, we reviewed USAID’s reform plans, proposals, and related documents and interviewed officials involved in USAID’s reform efforts. We interviewed USAID officials on the USAID Transformation Task Team, including the task team Coordinator and Deputy Coordinators. We also interviewed USAID representatives from two USAID employee unions: the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association. In addition, we interviewed officials from the Department of State and the Office of Management and Budget.

To determine the status of USAID’s reform efforts, we also reviewed USAID reform plans, reports, briefings, and project factsheets. We also interviewed USAID officials responsible for the planning and implementation of the agency’s reform projects. To determine the total number of USAID reform projects, we included all USAID reform projects identified by USAID as of July 2019. To provide the estimated costs associated with USAID’s reform efforts for contextual purposes, we obtained data from USAID on the costs of: 1) developing T3 reform efforts, including T3’s operational costs, 2) implementing T3 reform efforts, and 3) its Human Resource Transformation project contract data. We reviewed supporting documentation, and interviewed cognizant USAID officials about the completeness and accuracy of the data. We did not independently assess the data used to estimate the costs associated with its reform efforts. We determined it was beyond the scope of this review to perform a full cost-benefit analysis to assess the potential financial impact of USAID’s reform efforts using the cost estimates provided by USAID.

To determine the extent to which USAID has addressed key practices for planning and implementing its reform efforts, we assessed USAID’s reform efforts against key practices identified in our June 2018 report, which are organized by 12 subcategories of change management practices. The subcategories are based on 58 key questions for consideration in assessing reform efforts. We did not apply criteria from the “Workforce Reduction Strategies” subcategory of our June 2018 report. We deemed those criteria not applicable to USAID’s reform efforts because USAID officials stated their proposals regarding workforce reductions were overtaken by events when congressional appropriations for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 maintained USAID staffing at the levels associated with its workforce as of December 2017. For the other 11 subcategories included in our assessment, we determined which key questions of each subcategory were most relevant USAID’s reform efforts and applied those key questions to our assessment.

We categorized USAID reform-related actions into two separate categories: (1) those that generally addressed the subcategory and (2) actions that partially addressed the subcategory. We determined that USAID’s reform efforts had generally addressed a practice if we did not identify significant gaps in its coverage of the actions associated with this subcategory. We determined that USAID’s reform efforts had partially addressed a practice if we identified significant gaps in its coverage of the actions associated with this subcategory. We would have determined that USAID had not addressed a practice if it had not substantively addressed any of the key elements in the subcategory. However, we found that USAID at least partially addressed all of the practices. We defined “significant gaps” as the areas we identified, based on our analysis of the key questions of each subcategory, that were both relevant to USAID as an agency and important for the success of the reform efforts. Each of two analysts made an independent qualitative judgment as to whether or not USAID had generally, partially, or had not addressed those criteria. The two analysts then reviewed and reconciled any differences in the data used to reach each determination, and their results were subject to supervisory review. The analysts’ determinations were then reviewed by other GAO stakeholders with experience in this topic, and any concerns raised were resolved through discussion to reach the final determinations.

We conducted this performance audit from February 2018 to September 2019 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

Appendix II: Key Questions for Assessing Agency Reform Efforts

We developed key questions based on our prior work on key practices that can help assess agency reform efforts. The 58 questions are organized into four broad categories and 12 subcategories, as shown in table 5.

Appendix III: U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Headquarters Structure before Implementation of Proposed Organizational Reforms

As of June 2019, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) headquarters was organized as shown in figure 4.

Appendix IV: Comments from the U.S. Agency for International Development

Appendix V: GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff Acknowledgments

In addition to the contact named above, Thomas Costa (Assistant Director), B. Patrick Hickey (Analyst in Charge), Joshua Akery, Peter Beck, David Dayton, Martin de Alteriis, Emily Gupta, Christopher Keblitis, Steven Putansu, Sarah Veale, and Alexander Welsh made key contributions to this report.