To be good stewards of American taxpayer dollars, achieve lasting results, and advance U.S. foreign policy objectives, the Department and USAID will ensure sound strategic planning and program management are in place and invest our resources based on evidence. Our agencies work in countries with rapidly evolving political and economic contexts and complex challenges. By adopting more innovative and flexible approaches to program design, and continuously learning throughout program implementation, we will be able to respond nimbly and adapt to lessons learned. Disciplined planning and design processes help ensure the Department and USAID understand the local country context, assess what we need to do, and set meaningful performance milestones and targets to achieve diplomatic and development objectives. Robust monitoring and evaluation processes enable our agencies to learn what is working and how best to adapt programs to achieve results. Ultimately, the purpose of foreign assistance is to end its need for existence, by supporting countries in leading their own development journey. The Department and USAID will invest in cutting-edge approaches to find new and better ways to address the problems we are trying to solve. We will collaborate with the private sector and other non-traditional actors that can bring new resources and ideas, leverage new technologies or innovations that can accelerate our efforts, and strengthen the capacity of local partners to ensure the long-term sustainability and success of Department and USAID programming. Strategies for Achieving the Objective The Department of State’s Managing for Results Framework (MfR) and the USAID Program Cycle are foundational to making diplomatic engagement activities and development investments effective, efficient, and sustainable. These frameworks for strategic planning, budgeting, and program management set the stage for strategic alignment of resources and evidence-based diplomacy and development. The Department and USAID conduct joint strategic planning for regional bureaus, which in turn informs country level strategic planning. Each Department of State functional bureau develops a strategic plan for coordination across regions and countries. All embassies have an Integrated Country Strategy (ICS) in place, and as of 2017, USAID operating units completed 63 Country Development Cooperation Strategies (CDCS), representing the majority of USAID missions.13 The sustainability of our investments depends on results produced and valued by partner countries. Therefore, we will give precedence to local priorities and local implementers in regional and country strategic planning that align with American interests. The Department and USAID will evaluate programs to learn what is working well and where there is a need to adapt to maximize effectiveness. All foreign assistance evaluation reports will continue to be publicly available on USAID14 and Department15 websites. Ancillary to these efforts is the creation of USAID’s Development Information System (DIS), a unified portfolio management system designed to better manage USAID’s data, facilitate evidence-based decision-making, and enable USAID to improve reporting on the results of its activities. The Department and USAID will develop training and provide guidance to enable bureaus and overseas missions to define more clearly their programmatic goals, describe how our investments will help achieve them, and conduct robust monitoring and evaluation to determine the results and strengthen accountability. This guidance will be available online and will communicate to the public the processes in place to ensure good management of taxpayer resources.16 We will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of procuring services through contracts and support partners with grants and cooperative agreements, and increase our use of innovative and flexible instruments that allow for co-creation and payment for performance. The Department and USAID will streamline acquisition and assistance processes, deploy the State Assistance Management System (SAMS) across the Department, and create innovative approaches to improve core operations, increase stakeholder engagement, and enhance the capabilities of our workforce. Existing grant management systems will be improved to include performance management capabilities, streamlined communication, oversight, and coordination with grant recipients. Cross Agency Collaboration The Department and USAID collaborate with government institutions, private sector partners, national and international aid transparency and oversight groups, and civil society organizations in partner countries to gain valuable external perspectives and new ideas about how we conduct our work. We meet with Congressional stakeholders to discuss proposed budgets and approaches to delivering on our missions as well as on the status of pending legislation and our implementation of new laws affecting effectiveness and efficiency. Risk While risk is inherent to the Department and USAID’s work, planning, managing, and monitoring projects in non-permissive environments poses specific challenges. These include finding qualified contractors and grantees willing to work in these environments, vetting partners, providing security for and periodically evacuating overseas agency personnel, and gaining access to local partners and project locales for appropriate project design and monitoring. Greater engagement of local implementers can also pose risk. USAID will continue to use a Non-U.S. Organization Pre-Award Survey to determine the risks involved in the selection of local implementing partners and develop special award conditions to mitigate identified risks. Building local capacity can, however, take time, be more resource intensive up front, and may slow the rate of achieving specific development objectives. As a result, development impact may take additional time as local partner capacity is strengthened in the short term.