USAID is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has field locations in approximately 90 countries to provide economic, development, and humanitarian assistance worldwide in support of U.S. foreign policy goals. Its activities include technical assistance, research, policy advice, and infrastructure assistance. In headquarters, USAID is organized into three functional and five geographic bureaus. The functional bureaus are aligned with the agency’s three strategic goals—(1) economic growth and trade, (2) democracy and governance, and (3) global health. The bureaus design and manage activities that support their specific strategic goal. However, each activity is typically implemented in multiple countries around the world. The five geographic bureaus are responsible for oversight of overseas missions that design and manage activities that support USAID’s strategic goals. Overseas, USAID designs and manages its foreign assistance activities and A&A instruments at several types of missions. These include bilateral missions that design and manage assistance activities and A&A instruments in the countries in which they are located, such as the mission in Indonesia; regional missions that design and manage assistance activities and A&A instruments in the countries in which they are located and also for other countries in the region, such as the mission in Kazakhstan; and regional missions that provide administrative support, such as acquisition and assistance, legal and financial, to missions in their region, such as the mission in Thailand. USAID’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA) has overall responsibility for the administration of A&A instruments in headquarters. Its A&A staff provide professional advisory and technical support to USAID’s functional and geographic bureaus for developing and managing A&A instruments. OAA also provides periodic guidance to A&A staff at overseas missions. OAA is located within USAID’s Management Bureau, and its director reports to the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Management Bureau. USAID A&A staff at overseas missions provide advice and support to mission staff who design and manage assistance activities; they also have overall responsibility for the administration of A&A instruments at overseas missions. A&A offices are typically headed by a contracting officer (CO) who reports to the mission director or deputy mission director. At most bilateral missions, COs are co-located with A&A specialists and CTOs. However, under USAID’s regional mission structure, COs often provide A&A support to more than one mission and are not necessarily co-located with either the CTOs or all of the A&A specialists who assist them. Some missions with no on-site CO may instead have on- site A&A specialists who provide A&A support to CTOs. Appendix II lists missions with authorized on-site COs as of July 2008, as reported by OAA. USAID’s total obligations for A&A instruments doubled from about $5 billion to about $10 billion from fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year 2007. While total A&A obligations and number of A&A instruments increased only slightly at headquarters over this time period, A&A obligations overseas increased by nearly 600 percent, from about $1 billion in fiscal year 2002 to about $6 billion in fiscal year 2007. In fiscal year 2007, A&A obligations managed by overseas missions made up the majority—nearly 60 percent—of total A&A obligations. Figure 1 illustrates the A&A obligations managed by OAA headquarters and overseas missions for fiscal years 2002 through 2007. USAID’s total number of A&A instruments from fiscal years 2002 through 2007 also increased substantially, from about 6,000 to about 11,000. In fiscal year 2007, around 71 percent of the total number of A&A instruments was managed by overseas missions. USAID lacks the capacity to develop and implement a strategic A&A workforce plan because it lacks two key elements: (1) sufficiently reliable and up-to-date overseas A&A staff level data and (2) comprehensive information on the competencies of its overseas A&A specialists, who play a critical role in assisting COs and CTOs in overseas missions. During our fieldwork, we found that the numbers of A&A staff with the necessary competencies did not match A&A workload. Although various USAID has launched some ad hoc attempts to address the agency’s A&A workforce issues, these efforts lack critical elements of a strategic A&A workforce plan, particularly comprehensive information on its A&A specialists overseas. Although USAID’s Office of Human Resources (OHR) systematically collects data on A&A specialists’ staff levels, these data are not sufficiently reliable. OHR officials acknowledged they had concerns about the reliability and accuracy of the overseas A&A staff level data, particularly with regard to the number of overseas A&A specialists. These officials stated that they receive staffing data from missions but do not know whether mission staff validate the data. In addition, they told us that mission staff who prepare these data may not receive adequate guidance for classification of different overseas staff positions, and as a result, misclassification and inaccurate reporting of A&A staff levels may occur. Furthermore, OHR officials do not validate or confirm the data they collect from missions, according to these officials. The Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA) does not systematically track the number of overseas A&A specialists, and its data on overseas A&A staff levels are out of date. According to OAA officials, the office’s most recent data on the agency’s entire A&A workforce are the result of a fiscal year 2005 survey of all overseas missions to analyze workload and staffing within OAA. While OAA’s data are not current, the Office of Human Resources (OHR) officials told us that OAA’s data may still be more accurate than the data collected by OHR in fiscal year 2005. Our analysis of OAA’s and OHR’s separately collected data on overseas A&A staff levels for the end of fiscal year 2005 (the most current data made available to us by OAA) revealed substantial discrepancies. For example, comparing the two sets of data showed that OAA’s reported total overseas A&A staff levels for that year were more than 78 percent higher than those reported by OHR—OAA reported 264 overseas A&A staff, and OHR reported 148. In addition, we found that, at certain missions, OHR’s data showed no A&A specialists, whereas OAA’s data indicated several A&A specialists. Although ready access to the Office of Human Resources’ databases would allow other USAID offices to identify and resolve discrepancies in their staffing data, the offices lack such access. To date, according to OHR officials, OAA has not specifically requested OHR staffing data in order to compare them to its own. Although A&A obligations have increased significantly at overseas missions, USAID has not collected comprehensive information on the competencies, including knowledge, skills, abilities, and experience levels, of its overseas A&A staff. According to the principles of effective workforce planning, an agency should determine the critical skills and competencies needed to achieve current and future programmatic results. In May 2008, the Office of Acquisition and Assistance (OAA) and the Office of Human Resources (OHR) jointly conducted competency assessments for A&A staff in headquarters and COs in overseas missions as part of an effort to implement the President’s Management Agenda. However, these assessments did not include A&A specialists at overseas locations. For staff included in this effort, OAA and OHR conducted a capability assessment that identified key A&A staff competencies, such as decision making and written communication skills; assessed competency levels; identified competency gaps; and established strategies to reduce staff vacancies and skill gaps through recruitment, retention, and training. According to OHR officials, USAID expects to implement a similar assessment for A&A specialists overseas but will likely not begin implementation until fiscal year 2011 at the earliest. Without sufficiently reliable data on its entire A&A workforce—including A&A specialists overseas—USAID cannot collect comprehensive competency information, identify gaps in the numbers, skills, and competencies of its A&A workforce, and develop strategies to address them. At the USAID missions we visited, we found that the numbers and competencies of A&A staff did not match A&A workload. While at some missions the numbers of A&A staff with the necessary competencies were considerably less than adequate, at other missions they were more than adequate, according to mission officials. Officials at five missions we visited—Thailand, Cambodia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Mali—told us that their A&A staff at times could not provide adequate and timely support, such as providing guidance to CTOs and approving A&A documents, primarily because the numbers of A&A staff with the necessary competencies to manage their workloads were insufficient. We found several such examples, including the following: A CO at the regional mission in Thailand—where three COs manage A&A activities in 12 countries—stated that she sometimes could not address some missions’ needs in a timely manner because of competing workload demands. Staff at one of the missions for which the regional mission provides A&A support—Cambodia—told us that while their A&A workload has increased, they have at times not received adequate A&A support. These staff attributed this lack of support to a decline in A&A specialist staff levels from three in 2007 to one at the time of our visit, as well as the inexperience of the mission’s one remaining on-site A&A specialist. This A&A specialist only works on A&A activities part-time because she has other responsibilities.