Accelerating Innovation, Performance, and Impact at USAID
Summary
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) tackles some of the toughest challenges in some of the toughest places on earth, including fighting global pandemics, growing economic prosperity, strengthening democratic institutions, and providing humanitarian relief. USAID plays an important role in addressing global development problems that initially lack effective, scalable, and sustainable solutions. Yet USAID’s activities allow little room for the risk taking or iteration needed to drive significant improvements and encourage disruptive new ideas, with most programs implemented through detailed plans with rigid designs.
Imagine if the pace of progress for global development could match the breakneck pace of advances in the tech sector. The next administration should assess where current USAID interventions are inadequately meeting global need, applying best practices from innovation to improve programs accordingly. This will include shifting to outcomes-based performance metrics, dedicating budget for experimentation, establishing incentives that encourage risk-taking, linking payments with outcomes, and conducting ex-post evaluations of scale and sustainability.
To tackle AI risks in grant spending, grant-making agencies should adopt trustworthy AI practices in their grant competitions and start enforcing them against reckless grantees.
As people become less able to distinguish between what is real and what is fake, it has become easier than ever to be misled by synthetic content, whether by accident or with malicious intent. This makes advancing alternative countermeasures, such as technical solutions, more vital than ever before.
The next administration should establish a Participatory Technology Assessment unit to ensure federal S&T decisions benefit society.
AI is transforming how children learn and live, and policymakers, industry, and educators owe it to the next generation to set in place a responsible policy that embraces this new technology while at the same time ensuring all children’s well-being, privacy, and safety is respected.