Giving Compass' Take:

• United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has released information about its planned restructure. Many of the changes are intended to address long-standing concerns of aid professionals. 

• What stakeholders have been excluded from the discussion about how to best restructure USAID? How can other organizations learn from USAID's process? 

• Eric Postel and Andrew Natsios argue that the development credit authority needs to stay in USAID.

On April 13, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) made public its near-final internal redesign. The agency followed a constructive process that has produced a rational organizational restructuring.

The proposed restructuring follows a certain logic as to policies and programs that should be connected and elevated. Ideas discussed in recent years within the agency and in relevant reports and public fora are featured, but in various areas the plan plows new ground.

The redesign proposal adds two associate administrators who would be equivalent to undersecretaries at the Department of State. Therefore, the agency would have four senior officials—especially valuable given the need for high-level representation at inter-agency deliberations, with Congress, with the development community, and at international gatherings.

Officials in charge of the redesign are answering the call to break down the artificial divide between food assistance and non-food relief by merging the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Office of Food for Peace.

DDI would join certain technical expertise, program design, and innovative processes from the USAID Global Lab to make these capabilities available throughout the agency, with special emphasis on support for field missions.

Read the full article about USAID's redesign plan by George Ingram at Brookings.