From the article:
WASHINGTON — U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green will testify at the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday in a hearing that will likely offer a window into the status of the agency’s ongoing reorganization.
Many of the changes Green and his team hope to make require approval from lawmakers. The agency laid out its request in a series of congressional notifications last summer. The notifications, which Devex obtained, provide an in-depth look at the reasons behind Green’s proposed changes, what the agency’s leaders expect will be required to make them happen, and the specific problems each of the proposals are intended to fix.
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“Operating as two distinct organizational units to address a common set of humanitarian issues is inherently inefficient as it requires two sets of management and support structures with separate policies, processes, systems, tools and staffs,” the notification reads.
It also creates an unhelpful barrier to delivering complementary forms of assistance, such as food and health interventions, as Jeremy Konyndyk, former head of OFDA, noted on Twitter.
Under the new plan, OFDA and Food for Peace would merge into a consolidated bureau for humanitarian assistance, which would, according to USAID, “enhance the provision of the full-spectrum of humanitarian-assistance activities to include prevention, mitigation, and disaster risk-reduction, to enable communities to recover from, and respond to, emergencies on their own, and over time reduce the need for expensive humanitarian assistance, particularly in areas of recurrent crises.”
The idea of the merger is not new. Under the previous administration, USAID commissioned a study from the consulting firm McKinsey & Company to explore the idea and found that it could lead to reduced duplication and cost savings.
Konyndyk, who led OFDA during the Obama administration, applauded Congress’ approval of the plan, noting that the competing structures made previous efforts at coordination difficult.
“Historically this distinction led to weaker programming. During my time at AID, we tried to do integrated food/non-food grants during the Ethiopia drought of 2016, and found ourselves tied up in months of red tape due to different systems and grant requirements,” he wrote on Twitter.