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Management Improvements
USAID's Management Vision
USAID embraces the President's Management Agenda for a citizen-centered, market based, results-oriented government utilizing the Administrator's management reform principles as the means to enhanced delivery of global development and humanitarian assistance. The 2005 President's budget request reflects the Agency's efforts to deploy more unified and integrated approaches to achieve its important mission.
USAID has made considerable progress toward its goal of transforming the Agency into a premier, high-performance, international development and humanitarian assistance organization. To guide the Agency in its reform initiatives, core management principles were developed that exemplify the desired performance characteristics of a transformed USAID. The core management principles are:
- Simplify and standardize business systems and processes to reduce costs, simplify use, and enable the Agency to respond with speed and agility to changing program needs.
- Establish a customer service culture in all USAID's service providing organizations that demonstrates a dedicated commitment to making Agency programs as effective as possible.
- Increase efficiency by reducing overhead expenses and improving the ratio of product to process, making sure that the Agency's costs of doing business are transparent, aggressively managed, and compare favorably with peer organizations.
- Promote partner inclusiveness in all business relationships to better meet the needs of internal and external customers and to ensure that small businesses are well-represented.
- Increase transparency in program and business decision-making, assuring that decisions are fast, results driven, and clearly understandable to partners large and small.
- Ensure accountability and compliance with the letter and spirit of all applicable laws and regulations to achieve a clean audit opinion; deter legal disputes; acquire a sterling reputation for sound management; and improve relations with the Congress, the General Accounting Office, and the Office of Management and Budget.
- Deliver programs smarter, faster, better, and cheaper, continuously improving USAID's performance as a global "thought leader" and as the world's most effective delivery organization of economic and humanitarian assistance.
USAID's Business Transformation Plan
USAID's comprehensive plan to modernize the Agency's management systems, improve customer service, and implement performance-based results consists of the following four major business transformation initiatives:
- Strategic Management of Human Capital,
- Business Systems Modernization,
- Knowledge for Development, and
- Strategic Budgeting.
These four parallel components, aligned and integrated, are based on best practices methods and techniques. USAID's Business Transformation Executive Committee (BTEC) oversees and directs the transformation process. The BTEC, chaired by the Deputy Administrator and composed of Agency senior level executives, provides Agency-wide leadership for the business transformation and ensures that initiatives and investments are focused on the Agency's highest priority needs.
The BTEC is supported by a new Program Management Office (PMO) and a new Management Policy and Metrics (MPM) Staff. The role of the Program Management Office is to provide project management expertise on business systems modernization (BSM) activities across the Agency. The Management Policy and Metrics Staff will shepherd policy issues that do not clearly fit in another Management office and will implement an empirically-based, results-oriented performance management program throughout the Management Bureau.
Relationship to the President's Management Agenda
USAID's Business Transformation Plan fully supports the following five goals of the President's Management Agenda (PMA):
- Strategic Management of Human Capital,
- Competitive Sourcing,
- Improved Financial Management,
- Expanded Electronic Government, and
- Budget and Performance Integration.
The four components of USAID's Business Transformation Plan fully support the PMA and were explicitly designed to produce the performance breakthroughs desired by both the President and the USAID Administrator:
- USAID's Strategic Management of Human Capital initiative, for example, directly addresses the PMA's human capital goals and also encompasses aspects of competitive sourcing by requiring that future staffing decisions consider a range of sourcing alternatives prior to recruiting.
- USAID's Business Systems Modernization initiative includes reforms to the Agency's financial management, acquisition and assistance, and information technology capabilities, and directly addresses the PMA's e-government, financial performance, and competitive sourcing objectives.
- USAID's Knowledge for Development initiative includes plans to improve the strategic management of the Agency's intellectual capital, enhance learning from experience, and strengthen partner collaboration to facilitate the technology-enabled business transformation envisioned under the PMA's e-government and human capital objectives.
- USAID's Strategic Budgeting initiative corresponds to the PMA goals for Budget and Performance Integration. This Agency initiative encompasses strategic planning, budgeting, and decision-making reforms to better link performance and budget and to make Agency decision-making as performance-driven as possible.
FY 2003 Accomplishments
The Agency achieved significant accomplishments in FY 2003, including the following efforts:
- Developed an integrated strategic plan with the Department of State;
- Developed a human capital strategic plan framework that addresses USAID's needs and the requirements of the President's Management Agenda;
- Began the development of a joint high-level State Department and USAID Enterprise Architecture, consistent with the overall Federal Enterprise Architecture, to serve as a framework for business process and systems improvements in both agencies;
- Expanded the Strategic Budgeting Model into a system that more accurately deals with different accounts, regions, and central programs, and integrated and rationalized program, operating expense, and workforce allocations for all operating units and funding accounts;
- Made considerable progress in programming Agency resources using formal strategic budgeting criteria;
- Incorporated the findings of the performance assessment rating tool (PART) into the rationale for the budget request for all pertinent programs;
- Conducted an overseas workforce study to develop criteria and models for rational, transparent, and effective allocation of existing overseas staff;
- Initiated the application of cost-accounting methods to management support services to facilitate reallocation of resources to highest priority functions;
- Conducted an Agency "knowledge fair," implemented pilot Communities of Practice, and developed an initial Agency knowledge portal;
- Established a Program Management Office and Management Policy and Metrics staff to plan, coordinate, manage, and evaluate business transformation activities;
- Continued, steady improvement across all Management Bureau services on the Administrator's third annual all-employee survey;
- Began the use of activity based costing (ABC), a form of managerial cost accounting, to describe as activities and cost objects (results) the services and operations it undertakes;
- Received "green" scores for progress over the last two to three quarters in four of the five President's Management Agenda initiatives (except competitive sourcing);
- Was recognized by Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other outside experts of several USAID best practices in management and information technology reform, including capital planning and investment control, and enterprise architecture development methodology; and
- Successfully teamed with the State Department across all of the common administrative organizations through a Joint Management Council.
USAID improved the operation of the Agency's financial systems by the following efforts:
- Completed a joint study examining opportunities to integrate elements of State and USAID financial management operations worldwide; and
- Received the Agency's first-ever clean audit opinion and completed the audit before OMB's accelerated November deadline.
FY 2004 Projected Accomplishments
USAID plans to carry out the following further management improvements in FY 2004:
- Begin testing integrated acquisition and assistance software and begin streamlining procurement processes to align with the new software;
- Continue development of USAID's enterprise architecture in collaboration with the State Department, aligning the Agency business model with the Federal Enterprise Architecture;
- Adapt business processes to leverage Federal Government cross-servicing and e-government technologies through opportunities identified from State Department and USAID joint business cases;
- Complete deployment of the Phoenix financial management system to three overseas pilot missions;
- Continue deploying the Strategic Budgeting system to make budget allocation decisions;
- Complete a comprehensive Agency workforce analysis;
- Utilize the model of overseas workforce to begin making rational, transparent, and effective allocations of overseas staff;
- Developing a comprehensive human capital plan for the Agency;
- Complete a knowledge management strategy to reposition the Agency as a global knowledge leader and to facilitate knowledge sharing among partners and staff;
- Develop and use an integrated system of performance measures to assess business transformation progress; and
- Establish and implement customer service standards that give both suppliers and users of services a better understanding of what is to be delivered and when.
FY 2005 Projected Accomplishments
USAID plans to improve the operations of the Agency's financial management systems by:
Completing worldwide deployment of Phoenix financial system to overseas missions;
Achieving Federal Financial Management Improvement Act Compliance (standard general ledger requirement only);
Achieving a green status score on President's Management Agenda for Financial Performance;
Resolving primary accounting system material weaknesses;
Completing configuration of the joint accounting platform for State Department and USAID accounting systems;
Completing upgrade to Momentum Version 6 to accommodate integration of procurement system; and
Deploying new Acquisition and Assistance system in Washington. The new procurement system will be deployed in field missions in FY2006.
USAID plans to improve human resources management by:
- Implementing workforce planning analysis;
- Achieving mid-point for recruitment targets under the Development Readiness Initiative; and
- Developing and implementing a revised performance management plan for Senior Executive Service and Foreign Service employees.
USAID plans to improve information technology infrastructure by:
- Developing plans to upgrade the present internal telephone system in the Ronald Reagan Building;
- Completing desktop upgrade in USAID headquarters; and
- Completing transition of USAID financial accounting system to State Department platform.
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