Dear Partners,

I am pleased to share with you the Bureau for Management’s Office of Acquisition and Assistance (M/OAA) Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 progress report. This report represents the dedicated efforts of our global acquisition and assistance (A&A) workforce, and I am excited for you to have an opportunity to learn more about our work.  

In March, we released the second iteration of our A&A Strategy along with a corresponding implementation plan. This strategy resulted from consultations with implementing partners, USAID staff, and thought leaders across the international development community. The input from so many helped to form the vision of the strategy – “that USAID and its partners enable sustainable, inclusive, and locally led development results through acquisition and assistance.” Since the launch of the Strategy, we have made significant progress in its implementation, which you can read more about below.

This past fiscal year, we saw another record amount of funding processed through A&A mechanisms. In total, more than $38.1 billion was obligated through more than 23,000 transitions. This was an increase of more than $1.6 billion from FY 2022. 

One of the things I am most proud about is our efforts to rebuild and strengthen our A&A workforce over the last year – which is the first objective of our A&A Strategy. We onboarded a total of 27 new civil service Contract Specialists and internally promoted 10 Contract Specialists in FY 2023. On the Foreign Service side, over the last few years, we have hired 55 new Career Candidate Corps (C3) officers. In addition, 48 Foreign Service National (FSN)/Cooperating Country National (CCN) A&A Specialists now hold administrative warrants, which has increased from 19 at the start of FY 2023. We will continue our efforts to strengthen our workforce in the coming year. 

Our WorkwithUSAID platform has continued to grow. With more than 5,200 organizations registered in our partner directory and more than 300,000 regular visitors, the platform continues to help change how USAID does business. A number of new features were added to the platform this year, such as our Sub-Opportunities Portal and resources in nine different foreign languages. The platform also won the Fast Company’s award for a World Changing Idea. In this coming year, the Industry Liaison team has a lot of additional enhancements and resources that will be added to the platform to continue to support our partners. 

This past summer, we also said farewell to Mark Walther, a long-time USAID leader and, most recently, our Senior Procurement Executive, as he officially entered retirement. Mark is a living legend at USAID, having served at the Agency for 34 years. He will be greatly missed. I want to thank everyone who stepped into acting leadership roles over the last few months. We could not have made it through the last few months without their outstanding contributions.

Finally, we are thrilled to welcome on board our next Senior Procurement Executive, Chief Acquisition Officer, and Director for the Office of Acquisition and Assistance, Jami Rodgers, in FY 2024. 

Many thanks,

Deb Broderick
Deputy Director, Office of Acquisition and Assistance

 

Previous Reports