USAID General Publications

USAID Digital Policy (2024 - 2034)

VISION AND PURPOSE: DEVELOPMENT IN A DIGITAL AGE

USAID envisions a world where open, inclusive, secure, and rights-respecting digital ecosystems enable people everywhere to thrive.

In today’s digitally connected world, there is a growing recognition that open, inclusive, secure, and rights-respecting digital ecosystems* —and the life-enhancing and lifesaving services they enable— are fundamental components of sustainable development and humanitarian response. Cutting across every sector, geography, and demographic, digital technologies and cybersecurity are a fundamental part of the development journeys of our partner countries and are increasingly crucial to deepening development cooperation, optimizing humanitarian action, and understanding and reacting to conflicts and crises. The digital landscape has shifted significantly in the last ten years as internet usage in low- and middle-income countries has roughly doubled.1 Internet platform companies now dominate the technology sector; devices have become smarter, smaller, and more ubiquitous; person-level data are being collected at unprecedented scale; and artificial intelligence (AI)2 is reshaping the way people work, access information, and engage with one another.

The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World: Finiancing to End Hunger, Food Insecurity, and Malnutrition in all its Forms (2024)

The reverse in progress and the persistently high levels of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in recent years have put the world off track to meet Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Targets 2.1 and 2.2 – to end hunger, food insecurity and all forms of malnutrition by 2030. Previous editions of this report have repeatedly highlighted the intensification of several major drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition, specifically conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns, combined with the well-established underlying factors that contribute to food insecurity and malnutrition, such as lack of access to and unaffordability of healthy diets, unhealthy food environments, and high and persistent inequality. Not only are these major drivers increasing in frequency and intensity, they are occurring concurrently more often, and in combination with the underlying factors, resulting in increasing numbers of hungry and food-insecure people. Depending on the major driver or combination of drivers affecting food security and nutrition in a country, addressing them will require a portfolio of policies across six transformative pathways, as outlined in detail in The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021.

To attain the scale of actions needed, sufficient levels of and equal access to financing to address food security and nutrition challenges are essential. The theme of this year’s report focuses on the financing to meet SDG Targets 2.1 and 2.2 – financing to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms.

USAID: Stop Work Guidelines

This document was created using LinkedIn posts by different consultants. The links to the posts have been added as footnotes on each page. The guidelines provide essential insights on handling Stop Work Orders (SWOs) issued under USAID contracts and cooperative agreements, including best practices for compliance, financial impact mitigation, and procedural steps for work resumption.

Semiannual Report to Congress: October 1, 2023 - March 31, 2024

Our (USAID) outreach and external engagements give our congressional stakeholders, oversight partners, aid organizations, and the public timely and relevant information related to our oversight of U.S. foreign assistance programs. We seek to inform stakeholders about our work, coordinate oversight as appropriate, and highlight ways in which the aid sector can promote accountability and good stewardship of U.S. foreign assistance funding.

From Principle to Practice: Implementing the Principle for Digital Development

For over a decade the international development community has been exploring how the use of digital technologies, including tools like the mobile phone, can extend the reach of development. At the same time, development organizations have grappled with how to use these technologies to make their own work more participatory, sustainable, and efective.

The results have been mixed. Some projects have succeeded, enabling improved and sustained access to information and services that previously were out of reach for marginalized populations. Other projects have failed, often due to preventable reasons, resulting in hundreds, if not thousands of projects being unable to scale.

In the late 2000s, several donors and multilateral organizations began talking about failure in using digital tools to support development. Soon, sets of principles, lessons, and best practices started emerging, beginning with the UNICEF Innovation Principles in 2009. One year later, a group of mHealth implementers and donors independently developed a diferent set of principles known as the Greentree Principles. The Principles for Digital Development (Principles) were created through the integration and refnement of these two previous sets of principles.

Program Cycle Operational Policy - 2024-03-20

USAID, Revised 2024

The Program Cycle is USAID’s operational model for planning, delivering, assessing, and adapting development programming in a given region or country to advance U.S. foreign policy. It encompasses guidance and procedures for:

1) Making strategic decisions at the regional or country level about programmatic areas of focus and associated resources;

2) Designing supportive projects and/or activities to implement these strategic plans; and

3) Learning from performance monitoring, evaluations, and other relevant sources of information to make course corrections as needed and inform future programming.

Semiannual Report to Congress - March 2024 - 2024-03-20

USAID

Simply put, our goal at USAID OIG is to improve U.S. foreign assistance programmed by the agencies we oversee by providing assurances to Congress and the American people that critically important aid dollars are going where intended and having the desired impact.

Our oversight work during this reporting period tracked USAID’s major programs and initiatives. For example, we continued to prioritize USAID’s Ukraine response, expanding our on-the-ground presence in Kyiv, and issuing an evaluation of USAID’s direct budget support to the government of Ukraine administered through the World Bank. We also audited USAID’s response to the Rohingya crisis in Burma and Bangladesh and evaluated USAID’s role in evacuating aid workers during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, all while expanding our evaluation and inspection capacity.

Driving Progress Beyond Programs - 2023-01-20

USAID, March, 2023

Since USAID’s founding more than 60 years ago, we have helped tackle many of the challenges of our time. With development partners around the world, we helped lift communities out of poverty, push back against oppression, and secure peace after conflict. We helped spark the Green Revolution and avert an age of global and continuous famine. We helped eradicate smallpox, reverse the spread of AIDS, end Ebola outbreaks, lead the campaign that has nearly eradicated polio, and dramatically decrease the incidence of malaria and tuberculosis. We supported dozens of transitions from autocracy to democracy, enabled tens of millions of girls to attend school, and provided lifesaving aid to communities torn apart by disasters, wars, and other crises.

Yet despite this remarkable progress, the development challenges of today are more formidable than those the world has faced at any time since World War II, with significant implications for America’s national security. The COVID-19 pandemic caused mass devastation, resulting in millions of deaths, economic turmoil, and rising global inequality. The climate crisis bears down on us all, with particularly vicious and destabilizing impacts on those least able to withstand its effects—and least responsible for the emissions that caused it. Vladimir Putin’s brutal war on Ukraine has led to widespread misery and death and exacerbated a global food crisis to levels not seen in decades. In every region of the world, autocrats have become increasingly brazen, while democratic institutions and governance face a multitude of threats. All of these developments have combined to inflict significant economic harm on the world’s most marginalized communities.

These headwinds are occurring at a speed and scale never before witnessed, bypassing borders and affecting nations regardless of ideology or system of government. They are deeply interconnected, with climate change accelerating global hunger, the pandemic exacerbating long-standing economic challenges, and pervasive inequality contributing to democratic decline.

Artificial Intelligence Action Plan - 2022-05-20

USAID, 2022

As AI technologies are embedded and intertwined in digital ecosystems, a responsible approach to AI should include strengthening key aspects of the enabling ecosystem. This includes data systems, connectivity, and local workforce capacity. In addition, there must be a focus on strengthening the civil society structures holding AI systems and actors accountable, and shaping policy environments that in turn encourage open, inclusive, and secure digital ecosystems. Together, these investments will support governments, businesses, and individuals to sustainably and equitably benefit from the use of AI technologies