USAID official visits Seattle to talk development

Don't look to Congress for more foreign aid, two Washington congressmen told a group gathered to talk about global assistance Friday.

The new administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development told reporters he created his first agency budget with that advice in mind, cutting programs that were no longer meeting the goals of the agency, but Rajiv Shah would not say what programs are slated to be cut.

Shah said the cuts are one part of his work to streamline the federal agency and to help make the whole U.S. aid budget easier to understand and track. Earlier this year, he left a job at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle to work for the Obama administration.

About half the money the government sends to other countries for health and development aid - $21 billion to $22 billion - comes from programs managed by USAID, but the other $20 billion or so of foreign assistance comes from agencies scattered throughout the nation's capital.

There are no plans to consolidate that work, Shah said, but the administration is concerned about efficiency and transparency and growing the reach and effectiveness of foreign aid. A report on these efforts is due out within the next month.

President Barack Obama has expressed repeatedly his goal to double the amount of foreign aid the United States gives out.

"The president continues to live up to the overall commitment to develop foreign assistance," Shah said, adding that he believes Americans want to do more.

Foreign aid is important to the United States because it is the right thing to do, he said, but the U.S. also invests in programs to help the poor around the world because of "enlightened self interest," which some call national security.

Shah said foreign aid helps prevent or decrease conflicts over food shortages, it keeps young people away from radical extremism, and it lead to self-sufficiency and make future aid less necessary. He said it is also important to demonstrate that the big problems of the world are solvable.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Tacoma, commended Shah for his efforts to reform the way the nation gives foreign assistance.

"We're going to have to get more out of the money that we have," he said. "This is a tough time to talk about more money for foreign aid."

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, was more blunt in his assessment of the possibility of new dollars from Washington, D.C., basically saying: don't go there.

For now, it will take creativity and new technology to get more help for people around the world, Shah told nearly 400 gathered at Saint Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, at the program organized by Global Washington, a group of people working on global development in Washington state.

Technology is playing a role in several new initiatives by USAID. One seeks to feed more people through drought tolerant crops and to deliver advice to farmers on their cell phones.

"We believe we're on a cusp of a major effort to solve global hunger," Shah said.

The second project involves global health and integrating multiple programs into a whole systems approach so people can get help for a variety of issues through one health system, instead of going to one clinic for AIDS and another for malaria or cancer.

In all of its programs, USAID has a new emphasis on using data to determine the results of its projects.

Dr. Christopher Elias, president and CEO of PATH, a Seattle nonprofit that has used technology to solve global health and development challenges, advised against an overly enthusiastic embrace of technology.

"Innovation isn't always gadgetry," Elias said, But he also cautioned against taking the opposite approach of fearing technology. He said creative people need to figure out how to get the best solutions to problems and technology can be one approach.