Revolutionizing AID — Activity Summary

Following the “Strategic Thinking in USAID” seminar conducted by PPC on February 10th and 11th of 2003, USAID officials decided that a new USAID core policy statement should be formulated. PPC IDEAS supported this effort via five activities designed to further analyze, research and formulate a new strategy for USAID. The activities included a country typology, stakeholder survey and analysis, expert discussion series, and policy and strategy graphic presentations.

• Country typology — IRIS identified key terms and concepts linked to a new typology of the developing world, researched existing usage and definitions, particularly with respect to the US government and other donors, and proposed conceptions and definitions for use by USAID in the context of the “Revolutionizing AID” effort. The final product, “Proposed Typology in Order to Classify Countries Based on Performance and State Capacity,” was delivered in hard and electronic copies to USAID in June 2003.
  
  
• Stakeholder survey and analysis — IRIS identified significant categories of stakeholders in a new USAID strategy, both within and outside USAID and analyzed their interests relative to likely outcomes of the policy reformation process. PPC IDEAS also recommended steps that could be taken to lessen opposition to possible reforms.
  
  
• Expert discussion series — IRIS coordinated a series of discussions with guest speakers on several topics central to USAID’s new strategy (see Revolutioning AID support).
  
  
• Policy and strategy graphic presentations — IRIS assisted USAID in preparing a graphic representation of policy and strategic directions, specifically using existing databases of allocations by country for economic growth, transnational issues and humanitarian assistance objectives to graphically represent different allocation criteria, categories of countries, net total allocations by country, and the range of assistance approaches available for use in the different categories of countries.