Sec. 4. Working with local partners
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/bill/118/hr/7710/ih/section-4A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
To the extent feasible and appropriate, the Administrator of USAID should localize USAID’s partner base by considering— simplifying and increasing access to USAID resources for local partners in humanitarian and development sectors, including local partners who have relations, agency, or power structures in place that have produced, or can produce, strong trust, accountability, and legitimacy in the communities or networks such partners work in; diversifying award types to streamline performance requirements and working with the Office of Management and Budget to address threshold constraints such as fixed amount subaward thresholds, category management award targets, and other thresholds, policies, and contracting incentives that pose a barrier to effectively supporting local partners; streamlining monitoring and evaluation, periodic reporting, and other USAID reporting requirements; ensuring USAID staff is able and encouraged to conduct regular consultation with local partners in local languages of the host countries, making available solicitations for acquisitions and assistance and accepting submissions in local languages, video format, or verbal presentations, including by— investing in translation services; hosting workshop-based engagements; and advertising solicitations in local trade publications, local media including newspapers and radio, local community centers, and local online forums; allowing and promoting multi-year, flexible, tiered and milestone-based funding for new programs and to bring successful programs to scale; strengthening USAID staff and local partners’ capacity to undertake risk management and mitigation; supporting consistent and unimpeded access to full cost recovery for local partners implementing USAID-funded activities; assessing current definitions of local partner , local ownership , and localization used by USAID for programming and reporting metrics, and updating the definitions, as necessary; undertaking outreach campaigns and engaging with local partners, formally and informally, to raise awareness about opportunities, as well as how to apply for and manage awards in compliance with applicable Federal regulations and USAID policies, and ensuring such engagement is accessible to all entities, including unregistered and informal organizations; strengthening oversight of capacity strengthening components of awards to ensure United States and international awardees are making good-faith efforts to strengthen local organizations’ capacities, including independent and external evaluations to evaluate the mentorship process and regular feedback loops; expeditiously solving the shortage of contracting officers within USAID, including granting warrants to qualified staff and providing appropriate training; addressing performance evaluation criteria to create greater workforce incentives for USAID personnel to champion locally led development; addressing internal delays and recipient organization issues that result in the required extension of provisional Negotiated Indirect Cost Rates (NICRAs); conducting NICRA seminars in local languages and providing NICRA documentation in local languages; and ensuring that contracting officers and agreement officers communicate to awardees who do not submit for a NICRA that they are eligible for the de minimis indirect cost rate.