Blog Posts from October, 2011

Recently, I attended the "2011 Soft Power Symposium" hosted by Pepperdine University and the League for Hope, a non-government organization (NGO) that promotes public-private partnership to foster educational, medical, and commercial opportunities for disadvantaged populations. 

I wasn't familiar with the organizers and expected a conference with some discussion that might be new to me, some that would be standard, and a healthy bout of networking. It turned out to be all of that, but even better. The organizer, Rosalie Wyatt, was action-oriented and so was the discussion!

The purpose of the symposium was to develop agreement on common language and procedures to encourage the private sector to participate in U.S. military and diplomatic efforts. Such shared efforts are of particular interest in the current, increasingly austere, economic environment.  At this meeting, representatives from NGOs, government agencies, five COCOMs (EUCOM, AFRICOM, CENTCOM, NORTHCOM, SOUTHCOM), think tanks, and private industry discussed how they have conducted public-private partnerships to date, and the lessons they have learned. They also responded to the conveners' charge to them to consider some concrete measures.

I was joined on the first panel on best-practices by my colleague Lisa Samson, the J9 Director at the U.S. Southern Command; a representative of the U.S. Africa Command; Alan van Egmond, USAID's senior advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan; and several private sector representatives.

I gave examples of EUCOM's public-private collaborations - our workshop with transportation executives on the Northern Distribution Network and Modern Silk Road; our teamwork with Project Hope to work with counterparts in the Baltics to address Traumatic Brain Injury; our projects involving Business Executives for National Security and our support for USAID's calls for help during the Russian wildfires and Pakistan floods last year.

The emphasis of this short symposium on processes for encouraging and institutionalizing public-private collaboration is well-placed - especially as budgets are being constrained. It would also be useful to include in future discussions methods of measuring the effectiveness of these partnerships. This could further inform how and when the government would seek private partners or collaborators. What do you think? Please share your views with me and my J9 Interagency Directorate colleagues.

Evelyn N. Farkas, Ph.D.
Senior Advisor for Public-Private Partnership
to the Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR)
and Commander, U.S. European Command