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AUTHOR’S MESSAGE

What This Book Contributes?

This is a workshop in a book. It offers practitioner’s gems of wisdom for managing USAID assistance awards that can be measured in their weight in gold. It is an on demand tool for

gleaning insights about how to manage USAID awards that can be read at one’s own pace on topics of interests, which are color-coded by chapter for handy reference.

Be forewarned: This book doesn’t offer checklists; it offers a deeper understanding what is being checked off and why?

The topics covered are at the heart of USAID award management. Like a diamond, the gems shared also have five angles: What, Why, How, Who, and When? Being able to ask and answer these five questions throughout the project life cycle is the key to unlocking the mystery of good project management. The “right” answers to these questions, it’s emphasized, lie within applicable regulations and terms and conditions of awards, as well as in the space created by unique situations and the responses to them in working in challenging and complex developing country environments.

Within this framework it’s underscored that just as in the case of mining a diamond, some gems lie deeper in the mine than others. In reflecting on decades of development experience, the author and contributors dug down deep to mine the gems of their experience in order to direct the gaze of readers toward strategically asking and answering key questions. In borrowing from the principle of refraction in physics, the gems that are presented are intended to change the direction of a light to illuminate key questions and some of the ways that practitioners address them in effectively managing USAID assistance awards.

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In taking this approach, two facets of gems for management are crystal clear:

n The genius of management rests on how well it articulates and facilitates the interconnections of one function to another, with the understanding that a brilliantly designed thing unto itself has no meaning; it’s only when it interacts with other systems that its true merits, brilliance, and viability can be determined.

n Almost any management problem or challenge can be solved by strategically asking and answering the five strategic questions at the right time. The trick is knowing when to pose these questions, how to answer them, and being able to implement the answers in a timely fashion.

The challenge is that in the context of international development the question and answer frame is dynamic; there are always many shades and hues of questions and answers depending on the context. Hence, gleaning perspective is important. This book offers that: Seasoned practitioner’s perspectives. It does not profess to provide “the answers” because typically there are no one size fits all answers. Each situation is unique and therefore the questions and answers that pertain to it must be uniquely calibrated by implementers. A key contribution of this book is therefore to provide useful insights for such organization-specific calibrations.

As the primary goal of this book to lend perspective and share anecdotal practitioner experiences rather than to serve as a desk reference of regulations, readers are advised to refer to their awards; to USAID Automated Directives System (ADSs); to USAID’s Mandatory Standard Provisions; to host country regulations; to the OMB Uniform Guidance; and to other pertinent guidance and rule setting documents as definitive sources of information. Readers are also encouraged to consult with lawyers, accountants, finance and contracts specialists, and with other subject matter experts to delve more deeply into matters merely touched upon in this book.

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PREFACE

This is the book I would have liked to have read when I started out in compliance. I’m not a lawyer, accountant, or contracts professional; I’m a problem solver. As I look at the complexity

and increasing regulatory burdens being imposed on USAID award recipients, I see a problem. This book is intended to address a part of the problem by bringing critical information together in one place to promote a better understanding of the meaning of regulations and of the various terms and conditions of USAID awards. In other words, this book takes a step back from the checklist approach in explaining what to do in order to focus on why the check is on the list.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest bilateral international aid agency in the world and thousands of companies and organizations are reliant on it for income. Those who succeed in receiving awards offer sophisticated and complex services in the world’s most under-developed and fragile environments, with minimal infrastructure. The risk is high and one of the highest is failing to comply with applicable regulations.

Such a failure is easily accomplished, as there are many players involved in the implementation of awards. In the prime’s organization there are many players that have varying degrees of knowledge of the regulations and the same holds true for U.S. and non-U.S. subrecipients alike.

This book provides a foundation for understanding how to be compliant and with what to be compliant, which will help everybody to be on the same page for some time to come. It invites the reader to go on a journey from asking the big why questions about a broad body of regulations such as the Uniform Guidance to addressing some of the agency-specific requirements set forth by USAID in its Standard Provisions and in the terms and conditions of given awards.

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The gems of wisdom shared in this book have been mined from development practitioners with decades of experience in implementing some of the most complex projects in the most challenging environments in the world. There are few “what if” scenarios that haven’t been experienced in such circumstances.

As a single book would not be large enough to meaningfully compare and contrast acquisition and assistance approaches for each major topic covered, the choice was made to focus solely on managing USAID Cooperative Agreements (COAGs) and grants awards in this first “Gems” book. While the target audience for this first publication is current USAID development practitioners, those who aspire to win awards from USAID can also learn a lot and see what it takes to be a winner in the USAID arena.

Given the dynamic circumstances in which USAID awards are carried out and the political pressures that persuade priorities and influence regulations, it’s clear that anything stated herein is but a snapshot in a moving picture. For this moment this book enables readers to freeze the frame and reflect on lessons learned and on the insights of practitioners and compliance professionals.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Freeman serves as the Senior Director of Compliance for one of the leading development implementers,

Creative Associates, International. Upon joining the company six years ago, she stood up the Compliance Department and was instrumental in codifying its policies and procedures into manuals that covered every operational and programmatic function. In addition to being a compliance professional, Dr. Freeman is an entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience as a small business owner. She lived in Hong Kong for 12 years and has worked in over 100 countries as a consultant

for leading development institutions including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Her knowledge and expertise spans multiple disciplines. She is a well-known expert in the field of trade and economic development. The hallmark of her professional approach is problem solving, which has its roots in her academic training in cognitive psychology, management, and operations research. Her academic training and multifaceted development experience has uniquely qualified her to serve as a compliance professional, as it requires broad and deep knowledge on many topics, seasoned experience, and the nerve to confront challenges, spot the linkages and interconnections between phenomena, and the ability to recommend appropriate and wise corrective actions.

Throughout her career, Dr. Freeman has honed her ability to take massive amounts of information and to distill it down to its essence. In practice and in regard to the compliance function this has meant reviewing thousands of regulations across many fields to conclude what is meaningful and meaningless. With this insight she has been able to serve as a leader in bringing others along into the realm of being compliance champions.

Having started out as an Auditor with the U.S. General Accounting Office, Dr. Freeman went on to work at Booz, Allen & Hamilton where she was in the government consulting practice and helped to set up new government agencies. She later joined the U.S. Diplomatic Service and served as the Regional Director for Asia of the U.S. Trade Development Agency, based in Hong Kong. Upon leaving the service she remained in Hong Kong where she joined a leading trading company, Lark International that taught her about the mechanics of trading products. Her practical and applied knowledge of trading led her to become a Trade Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce and

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U.S. Trade Representative, which is a position she continues to hold today, after having been consecutively reappointed every two years since 1991. Today, Dr. Freeman also serves as the Chairman of the U.S. Trade Representative Trade Advisor Committee on Africa (TACA) and formerly served on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, SBA, and on the board of the DC Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Freeman has also worked closely with USAID since the 1980s and wrote its first book on “How to Do Business with USAID,” for the agency’s OSDBU office. A prolific writer, Dr. Freeman has written and published a series of 23 books that address various “how to” topics including a number of books on “how to” do business with the federal government. These can be seen on her website at: www.aasbea.com.

She holds a Ph.D. in Applied Management and Decision Sciences from Walden University and a Master’s of Science in Public Policy and Management and two undergraduate degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University. She is a member of an informal group of Compliance and Ethics Officers of the leading USAID development implementers that meet once a month to discuss topics of mutual interests and a member of the Capital Area Business Ethics Network (CABEN).