We are strengthening our core capacity to achieve more meaningful development results while increasing our efficiency. This effort ranges from attracting and retaining talented Agency staff to creating new monitoring and evaluation systems and revitalizing our policy, financial and technical expertise. 

Goal: Across a number of Agency initiatives, we will strengthen our capacity to deliver results while maximizing efficiency, evaluating the effectiveness of our investments, and tailoring programs and policies to strengthen development impact.

Approach:

• We have developed five-year strategies, called Country Development Cooperation Strategies, for most of our partner countries, aligning our investments against the top development priorities in a country so we can achieve the greatest impact.
• We have developed new, rigorous monitoring and evaluation policies that will help us and our partners learn and improve our work together.
• We are improving and creating systems to align talent against top priorities and development challenges, and we are using better hiring and training tools and incentives to recruit staff and experts. 

Results:

• We issued a new evaluation policy in February 2011, now considered a gold standard in the U.S. government. Guided by this policy, we will complete and publish 250 high-quality evaluations online by the end of 2013.
• We have almost doubled our Foreign Service, and placed nearly half of these new officers in Africa for their first assignment. We’ve also created more opportunities working directly in the communities we partner with on programs.
• By the end of 2013, nearly all of our field-offices will have completed Country Development Cooperation Strategies, created in close cooperation with our partners and the State Department. 

Related Resources:

• Available Country Development Cooperation Strategies