The office is also responsible for ensuring Agency guidance and procedures are followed, as well as developing Mission policies and systems to ensure quality, results-oriented activities are being implemented. For a detailed description of duties and requirements, please review the complete solicitation at the following link. Further information please click here.
You are required to submit a complete online application with all required supporting documents by the deadline of each vacancy. Failure to do so may result in a determination that the applicants are not eligible and qualified. All Applicants must apply using internet interface. You must be logged into your ERA account to apply. If you are a first time user and applying for the positions at U. Embassy in Cambodia for the first time, you need to create an ERA account.
To create your ERA account, please follow the steps below:. After you complete these steps, you will be redirected to the log-in page. Recent administrations have utilized this authority to fill approximately 70 positions, principally by individuals with specific technical and policy skills.
But the number in the Trump administration reached , many without relevant skills and experience and appointed at lower levels that typically are reserved for career professionals, and some with an extreme ideological bent in conflict with USAID culture and policies. A heavy overlay of political appointees stifles career advancement, discouraging talented officers from remaining in public service. USAID is in the midst of a commendable workforce planning exercise to improve its personnel system.
The rework seeks to create a more agile hiring system, including an effort to collapse some 25 cumbersome and costly hiring mechanisms into a few that are more flexible and nimble. However, what the agency needs is a fundamental reenvisioning of its personnel system for the 21st century. USAID like State has a personnel system modeled on the military—enter the service as a junior officer and work up or out. Is this the relevant model for the 21st century?
Long-term career service is important for core USAID managers to develop experience with agency and governmentwide rules, processes, and policies, but USAID is also dependent on staff with highly honed and constantly advancing technical skills that do not require years of service in a bureaucracy; in fact, such skills can become dulled from constant dealing with agency rules and regulation, paperwork, and a focus on program management.
If USAID is to perform as a foremost development agency, it needs a more adaptable personnel system with greater ability to bring in experts for periods of two to five years and mid-career skilled technical professionals who can contribute to putting the agency at the forefront of technical knowledge and leadership.
Moreover, the agency must have a diverse workforce that represents the face of America. An effective personnel system today must account for millennials having multiple careers; for working spouses; for foreign service families needing a break in Washington or back in their hometown for a few years to support aging parents or children through the period of teenage schooling. Especially notable for development is the early nomination of the administrator of USAID, Ambassador Samantha Power, bringing to USAID an experienced, respected thought leader with a history of speaking out for what is right in the world and who, formally as a member of the National Security Council and informally as part of the inner national security circle, will bring a strong voice to deliberations not just on development but to related foreign policy issues.
It also has made important decisions on the U. To build on this constructive start, there are a number of ways in which the administration can elevate development and move USAID toward the often-articulated goal of being a preeminent development agency. The administration should work with the Congress to enact legislation to require each administration in its first year to issue a comprehensive U.
Global Development Strategy 6 as to how the U. Global development policy. A narrower approach is for the administration, following the example of the Obama administration, to issue a governmentwide development policy covering priorities for both bilateral and multilateral development cooperation. USAID mission director strategic role.
Under the framework of the development strategy or policy, given the large number of agencies represented at embassies, many engaged in delivering assistance programs, the USAID mission director should be designated the assistance coordinator to the chief of mission and charged with coordinating a country-level strategy that encompasses the development cooperation activities of all U.
Besides updating old policies, the principle USAID policies and frameworks adopted under the outgoing administration see Box 1 need to be reviewed to ensure consistency with Biden administration policies and priorities. Several broad policies and frameworks are particularly relevant for the priorities of COVID and climate, the recently released policy on women and gender must be rewritten, and a policy on civil society is needed:.
Journey to Self-Reliance. Digital Strategy. Economic Growth Policy. Over the Horizon. Redefining our Relationship. The new administration should carefully review the framework to ensure it accounts for its priorities and approach to development.
USAID policy framework. Over the horizon. The new administration should mine this effort for lessons learned for how USAID can anticipate and analyze country needs. For example, COVID affects all aspects of development and all countries, not just the 15 identified as priorities. Clear choice. The agency needs a policy frame of collaborating with China where possible 7 climate change and humanitarian issues but offering an alternative to the Chinese approach through its grant assistance model of development based on transparency, localization, and equity for the often forgotten.
Further, it can engage with allies in the OECD Development Assistance Committee, World Bank, World Health Organization, and other international institutions to ensure that it is the principles of the Paris Declaration and rigorous analysis that drive official development assistance and use the weight of allied donors and institutions to pressure China into a more constructive use of its deep financial resources.
The new policy was rushed through at the end of the Trump administration without due consideration to the considerable input offered from within the agency and from civil society. The policy should be taken down and the prior policy reinstituted while extensive consultations are undertaken on a new policy 8. Civil society. Building on National Security Memo 1 , the administration should assign lead responsibility for international assistance policy and management to USAID, based on its capacity for planning and implementation of programs in developing countries to deal with the broad ramifications of COVID USAID, working with the interagency, should develop a plan that deals with the political, economic, and social impact of the pandemic and accounts for the capabilities of other government departments and agencies.
For example, in the area of heath it should encompass the narrower but deeper health expertise of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services, and the diplomatic clout of the Department of State. Climate change. Learning from the foundation laid during the Obama administration and under the overall strategic leadership of Climate Envoy John Kerry, USAID should lead the development, with extensive interagency participation and civil society consultations, of a governmentwide development strategy to deal with mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Like COVID, climate change is a global bad that must be addressed through coordinated and consistent domestic and international efforts. S ustainable Development Goals. Democracy, human rights, and anti-corruption.
Promoting democracy and human rights has long been a central tenet of U. After a flowering of democracy in the s, democracy has suffered setbacks the past decade or more.
President Biden has called for a Summit of Democracies, and Ambassador Power has specifically highlighted corruption as a priority. USAID will need to determine its role in advancing democracy and human rights and its contribution to the democracy summit. However, that strategy was written in , prior to much of the current backtracking on democracy, closing of space for civil society, spread of nativism and misinformation, explosion of the internet and social media, use of modern technology to track citizen activity, and authoritarian regimes taking advantage of the COVID pandemic.
Particularly relevant, USAID brings to the task experience and understanding of how digital both advances and undermines democracy and how corruption weakens democracy, including in serving as a tax on the most vulnerable, deprecating government services, and eroding trust and confidence in government, the bedrock of democracy. Digital initiative. Digital has the power to create and undermine—to make economic production more efficient and inclusive, but Russia, China, and other autocracies are weaponizing digital tools.
S commercial gains. There are several actions the Biden administration can take to reduce the dispersion and assign USAID the appropriate role in advancing U. This is a significant recognition of the importance the Biden administration is placing on having the development voice at the table when major international issues are considered. The Biden Cabinet includes Vice President Harris, the secretaries of 15 departments 11 , and the heads of nine agencies and offices.
Consolidation of key functions. Chair of the Development Finance Corporation. As the business of the DFC is directly related to that of USAID and secretaries of state frequently have not attended board meetings, the law should be amended to make the administrator the chair and the other agencies State, Treasury, and the Trade Representative represented at the deputy level.
Barring that, in the absence of the secretary of state, the USAID administrator should hold the gavel and her responsibilities as vice chair clearly enumerated.
Interagency coordination. The resulting Transformation plan is a generally well-thought out organizational restructuring that mainly needs a focus on proper implementation. The one outstanding congressional approval of the multiple pieces of the Transformation puzzle as of the end of was the merger of policy, strategy, and budget into a new Policy, Resources and Performance PRP Bureau.
The merger is central to the restructuring as it addresses the current disconnect between policy, strategy, and budget. With a sleight of hand in early January, Secretary Pompeo overrode congressional holds on eight congressional notifications, including the hold on the PRP Bureau. Although the agency can now technically move ahead with establishing the new bureau, it should consult with and address the concerns of congressional committees, including by designating the head of the PRP Bureau a Senate-confirmed position and moving expeditiously to staff up the agency to appropriated levels.
USAID budget authority. For the accounts it manages, USAID should be assigned full budget authority 13 and responsibility for the a process of aligning funding allocations with appropriate levels and for dealing with congressional committees on reprogramming funds.
Scope of F. Career appointments. USAID should reserve a significant portion of senior positions for career staff because many positions need the experience and knowledge of career professionals and to provide opportunities for career staff advancement. USAID has a draft policy on diversity, equity, and inclusion that should be finalized and implemented. It should set forth ambitious goals to increase diversity and inclusion in the civil service and foreign service and an action plan to achieve those goals, with an annual review to measure progress and determine forward action.
The plan should cover recruitment, retention, leadership opportunities, and agency culture, and have clear mechanisms for accountability. Personnel level. Permanent USAID staffing needs to match the level of funding the agency manages and policy and program responsibilities, specifically having permanent staff perform responsibilities that are of an inherently government nature.
An assessment in the Obama administration determined that for the foreign service that would be a level of 2, A review should be undertaken to assess the level of permanent staffing required for the agency to properly execute its responsibilities.
Foreign Service Nationals. They should have opportunities to serve in senior mission positions and be granted greater decisionmaking authority, 14 the need for which is made starkly apparent by their expanded responsibilities during the COVID pandemic.
Career development. Budgeting for staff. The administration and Congress should review the manner of funding staff through the OE Operating Expense budget. The agency should engage OMB and the appropriations committees about the most propitious way to fund human resources.
New personnel system. The administration and Congress should engage the Academy of Public Administration to partner in designing a 21st century personnel system. Bringing about that change will require the leadership of all related departments and agencies articulating and respecting the role of development, ongoing staff training, and extensive Goldwater-Nichols-type programs of staff serving a tour in another agency.
While the content of this paper is the sole responsibility of the author, he would like to acknowledge the review and comments that strengthened the paper by Susan Fine, Patrick Fine, Larry Nowels, and Tony Pipa. Brian Atwood and Larry Garber. November Brookings Institution. September 10, Includes the Justice Department, led by the Attorney General.
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