 |
|
|
|
 |
- 06/18/08: Briefing by USAID Administrator and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance Henrietta H. Fore and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood - "The International Conference in Support of Afghanistan"
- 05/17/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance at Ukaj Wood Processing Plant, Lipjan, Kosovo - "Small Business Owners Reception"
- 05/17/08: Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore, USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance at Las Pallmas Greenhouse, Lipjan, Kosovo - "Kosovo Cluster Business Support Project Dedication Ceremony"
- 05/17/08: Fulbright Signing Ceremony, Pristina, Kosovo
- 05/16/08: Press Conference with Fatmir Sejdiu, President of Kosovo, and Henrietta H. Fore, USAID Administrator and Director of Foreign Assistance, Pristina, Kosovo
 RSS Feed for Recent USAID Speeches and Testimony
|
|
|
|
|
Excerpts from Remarks by Henrietta H. Fore
Director of Foreign Assistance and USAID Administrator
Global Development Commons
Global Development Commons Luncheon
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Paris, France
December 18, 2007
All right, let me start by saying that I think we are living in a time in which there have been a number of significant changes. For many of you, the ambassador (Ambassador Egan, Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, Paris, France), you and I, were just talking about the fact that I'd been in AID 18 years ago the first time. And I'd been assistant administrator for private enterprise worldwide and for Asia - South Asia, East Asia, and then the Middle East. The world is very different now. And what has happened in that time period is something that we've all been watching, which is that the private sector has become an enormously strong player in foreign assistance in a way that it just wasn't before.
And so, one of the things that strikes you as you look around our world is how we have got to have more public/private linkages. And thus, some of it ties into the technology; some of it ties into the intellectual capacity; but our world of foreign assistance has changed, and we are at the beginning - I think - of a very new era that is going to take decades to really flesh out. But it is going to be based on these public and private actors in the world of foreign assistance and development.
So given that, that we are at the beginning of this new era, how would we want to organize ourselves in our development community? For many of us, we have spent decades in the world of development and have thought about it both in practical terms, serving in countries operationally. But we've also been thinking about it intellectually. We have been looking at the results. We've been looking at how we measure ourselves, and what have we actually accomplished. And so, as we began thinking about it, we seem to be heading toward the idea of something called a global development commons.
So let me talk a little bit about what might lie in such a commons and what we were thinking of. There is a larger community. And the players in this community are now expanding at a very rapid rate. But in this community, at the center, should be host-country governance. I think that our work should always be centered around the needs of a developing country and its people. So how the people are defining their needs and priorities - the government is defining its priorities - so that people can build their own futures, their own country, their own system, in every sector.
So if we begin with a country basis, who then do we want in this commons - similar to an old English commons? Who should come there? This world should be that of equals. It should not be that on the highest level are the old developing countries, donor agencies, and then further on down the line in a subservient level are the countries. But rather, we are all arriving - like a table like this that we are at, a commons. You want the host-country government; you want the non-profit organizations; you want the academic community; you want the private sector. And you want the private sector, both in terms of their corporate social responsibility, but also in terms of their own business interests, of which we are seeing an increasing and huge interest.
We want someone that Ambassador Egan and I were just talking about - philanthropreneurs - the business people who have become well-to-do and now wish to give back to society in some way. They want to reach out - (inaudible) - just individual lacking much information. We want foundations. We want this entire group to come together in a commons. We would like information to be exchanged. We would like information about best practices to be exchanged. We would like it about markets. We would like it about technical assistance.
We would like people to be able to muse virtually and in reality with each other and think about what they are accomplishing, what they are trying to accomplish, how do you measure, how do you get results from programs? And we'd like to gather in a way that we have not fully seen. There are many parts around the world that are beginning to do this.
So how can we bring them together? How do we need to organize this information? Is it on trade, environment? Is it sectoral? Is it by country? Sometimes in the United States, we struggle with the idea of how we even gather what all the other U.S. government agencies are doing. My colleagues who run the Millennium Challenge Corporation struggle with this. But you know, sometimes, it is hard just to know what is going on in a country. But we as a donor community must have ways that we talk to each other about this. We also want to search it. We now have searchable engines. So we want to exchange information both in the virtual world as well in the real world.
You all are the holders of much of the intellectual capacity within the world. And so, I'm counting on you. And why we've come here is to think with us on how we can organize, where the needs are, what you see as being important for a global development commons. How can we fashion this? How should we think about it as a development whole?
When we in the United States had first thought about the Marshall Plan, we thought about it as a way of reaching out in foreign assistance to a world that had systems and institutions that needed to be brought back. But that is not the world that all of us face now. We are working in countries in conflict and in post-conflict. They are very fragile. So we have many issues before us.
It can be how to pass off between a military and a civilian development agency. It can be how you work in countries without institutions. We have just been at the Palestinian donor conference. How to create the institutions, both public and private, is what we as a world community need to do for creating a viable and strong Palestinian state. We need general consultation with our own community. We want to start with the principle that countries are at the center of our thinking. We want a real-time exchange of information.
For many of us, when an idea begins to come into the mind of a minister in a host-country government, it can be the prime minister - just brand new, just elected - they begin to turn to the donor agencies around them. And two years later, we often have a program with technical assistance to come to help that prime minister. It takes too long. We have to speed up that passage of information, of activities, so there is a marketplace of ideas; there is a gathering of information that is real-time. But that is the world we want to move toward.
We think that there is a way to fill these information gaps. We think that knowledge and knowledge management is at the core of this, both in the virtual and in the real worlds. We want to integrate the needs and priorities of these host-country governments, but in a way that we all can assimilate it. So along with all of the stakeholders worldwide, we want to hear your thoughts and ideas. And we might, Ambassador, with your approval, begin the conversation with just three thoughts.
The first is, how do you think it would be most useful to approach this idea of a global development commons. Is there a real-world demand for it in the areas that you see? I know there's a whole science and technology sector that we have. What would be the contents both of the surfaces as well as the information that one would want to have in this commons?
Second is, how can the OECD work both in the Internet as well as in the development area for being a hub for this inclusive global concept? And then, the third, what opportunities would you see as partnership with other stakeholders, because we really want this to be public and private.
It's an exciting world out there. The business community is very much a part of this. We want to be able to reach out and capture that, and we'd like a way to tear up many corporate and individual donors into the world of existing projects as well as fashioning many new public/private partnerships...
...Let me tell you what we were thinking. But we want to think with you so you will be able to guide, create with us these thoughts. Three things - we could see that there are a number of networks that are out there, the development gateway among others. We were just sort of chuckling among ourselves that probably USAID has financed 50 or more of these centers. We don't link them. We don't search them. We don't have a way of accessing them, and thus the knowledge isn't brought together in a commons. It is not as integrated, or it's not yet a commons. It can be atomized now, is our sense.
There seemed to be three different areas that we have heard that needed gathering. The first is that of the marketplace for ideas and information. Ambassador Ekin was talking about the idea of a farmer in Thailand and where that farmer got information about the markets. There is a need for market information.
There is also a need for information about best practices, so that if you are the ministry of agriculture and you're thinking about property rights, how you can think about property rights in your country, where you go to get that piece of information. You could turn to our representative somewhere around the table. You could turn to a virtual or a real network. But you would like to be able to get some gathering of best practices. OECD and the DAC have some extraordinary practices and data that could be mined. So do a number of us in our own country archives, and some are virtual, some are not, but it could be accessed. So that's one segment, which is a marketplace for information, goods, and services.
Secondary, the people seem to say they would like to do is just what you said that you could see a reason for a dialogue - sort of like a chat area, a place where you could muse and think with colleagues around the world on a number of subjects. Communities of practice where there is trust, they would form, and they will form without us, but they could inform around some subjects and among some groups and individuals that should talk to each other. But they will occur. Now, I don't know in your number of disciplines if there are some areas that you particularly see it. Maybe it's development fads; maybe there's some other areas that people really would like to gather around.
So that's a secondary, which is just a dialogue area. And the third area is what we were talking about with donors. And so many new actors coming into this world and how do you link up with organizations and projects in a country that can use scaling up that already exists so that if you are interested in trying to help orphanages in a country, which orphanages are currently running that you could safely give to. You're a long way away when you're in the Netherlands or in the United States or in Switzerland and how do you know where you can give?
If we can link up donors and programs around the world, that would also be a real facility. So, at least those three things have come up as things you would like to see in the global development commons. Now, part of the challenge is you can't do everything and where do you start? How do you start it because there's an intellectual component and there's an operational component. And so, you're thoughts and ideas on that would be really welcomed as to how we should - where it is most important to begin.
Back to Top ^
|
