Tom got this email:

Tom:

I'll be brief...we do agriculture work, USAID has hired us three times, through grants and contracts, to do post-disaster work. Critical components that USAID (or the Dept of Everything Else) needs to quickly respond:

1) experienced staff who are not afraid to make a decision, and relentlessly push contractors to perform
2) contract mechanisms to hire someone to do the work
3) available budget.

USAID has 1&2 in place. They have done a better job recently with #3, making sure there is sufficient budget in place either globally or regionally to quickly move it in response to a natural disaster.

Contractors by definition are nimble and (fairly) quick to respond (depending on the contractor). Good ones can find the right people willing to go into disaster areas at a moment's notice. This is our
problem, we do this for a living, if USAID is able to get their three tasks organized, we can handle the rest. Lots of public comment and complaint about the cost of contractors. I would argue that overheads for development consultancies are on par with NGOs, governments (USG overhead is quite high if someone took the time to figure it out), and MUCH lower than DOD contractors.

In contrast to contractors there are NGOs (the CARE's, Catholic Reliefs, Oxfams, World Visions, etc) of the world. Typically excellent getting food, medical and shelter organized after a disaster. They are paid to have materials at the ready, and to quickly get things moving... as a grantee, they also don't have to follow all the BS regulations (3 bid procurements, fly and buy American, etc) that we contractors have to follow. But they ABSOLUTELY SUCK at doing transformational development work. The are staffed with people who have a development worker mentality, not a private sector mentality, so cannot move beyond the immediate relief work (actually not in their interest either).

In sum (and in respect of your 3K memory), the "development in a box" infrastructure is in place, and can work. But there are numerous impediments built into the system that keep it from working as effectively as it could... grist for the next email.

Tom's comment:

Some interesting feedback from an exec at a contractor. Sure, a bit o' sales, but no backing down from the implied challenges of Development-in-a-Box, which I like.