Hillary Clinton's Speech on Development

Today U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech on development at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The full speech is available here. The speech gives an overview of how development should work in coordination with defense and diplomacy and offered some specific insights into the ongoing Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and the Presidential Study Directive on Global Development.  This major presentation comes a day before Rajiv Shah is sworn in as USAID Administrator.   There are plenty of commentaries available on the speech and I won’t repeat them here.  However, Secretary Clinton touched upon one area that is of interest to anyone concerned with how the the U.S. engages the rest of the world and the capacity of our governmental institutions to carry out that engagement: the over-reliance on contractors in development.  (I have written about that previously – available here.)  In her speech she said:

We need to ask hard questions about who should be doing what in the work of development.  For too long, we’ve relied on contractors for core contributions and we have diminished our own professional and institutional capacities.  This must change.  Contractors are there to support, not supplant. USAID and the State Department must have the staff, the expertise, and the resources to design, implement, and evaluate our programs.  That is why we are increasing the numbers of Foreign Service officers at USAID and the State Department, and developing a set of guidelines through the QDDR for how we work with and oversee contractors, to make sure we have the right people doing the right jobs under the right conditions.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – Photo Credit: US Department of State