Over the last year there has been significant progress across the acquisition and assistance (A&A) landscape, from streamlining and innovating our A&A processes, to improving our core operations, increasing stakeholder engagement, and developing and enhancing our workforce.

In Fiscal Year (FY) 2016, the Agency had another record year obligating $16.4 billion through the A&A process. With another year of increased funding, our focus on Procurement Action Lead Time (PALT) has become more important. This year we made progress in reducing PALT in a number of awards, and we will continue efforts towards further PALT reductions during FY 2017. In regards to improving our core operations, we focused on past performance reporting,  increasing the utilization of small businesses, improving our Business Forecast, and providing better selection of instrument guidance. In each of these respective areas, we are proud of the work we have been able to accomplish. We awarded a record amount to small businesses and achieved an 88.3% compliance rate in past performance reporting. By streamlining our Business Forecast process, we were able to cut down on the production time from nearly 8 weeks to just 8 days. 

Transparency is critical to the way we do business and how we engage with our partners. At our partners’ request, we added a variety of new resources and materials to USAID.gov, including our Procurement Executive Bulletins (PEBs), and a list of our active Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contracts. Additionally, we launched a new ticketing system to manage all inquiries for our Ombudsman’s office. With this new system in place, our partners can track the status of their inquiries, and we can begin to identify trends in topics brought to us by our partners. 

In June we launched the A&A Lab, which is an interconnected network of A&A staff helping to advance the Agency’s mission through workforce development and the testing and scaling of innovations in A&A. To date, we have established Labs in Frankfurt, Africa, Washington, and Central and South Asia. In FY 2017, we will be launching Labs in East Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. 

It is by way of the A&A Lab that we have focused our attention on developing and enhancing our A&A workforce. We have launched a monthly Community of Practice conference call, established a virtual A&A Helpdesk, and created a Business Manager’s toolkit. 

We are excited about the direction A&A is moving at USAID. With the collaborative efforts of our A&A Lab, our dedicated A&A professionals working around the world, and our partners, we believe that we can exceed all of the goals we have set.

Updated as of March 31, 2017