Inactive

The Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) Center leads the Agency in supporting overall efforts to advance democracy, human rights, and governance. As the home base for USAID’s DRG programs, th... The Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) Center leads the Agency in supporting overall efforts to advance democracy, human rights, and governance. As the home base for USAID’s DRG programs, the Center advocates for democratic governance, driving important research, and supporting over 90 field missions worldwide to develop programs. USAID’s DRG sector includes support for good governance, rule of law, elections and political processes, civil society and media, human rights, and other DRG fields. USAID currently manages over $1.7 billion a year on a broad range of democracy programs covering justice, human rights, citizen security, civil society, media, local government, legislatures, public financial management, political parties, elections, anti-corruption, and anti-trafficking in persons. These efforts are critical to improve government effectiveness, accountability, transparency and legitimacy, and to ensure citizens are empowered to play a role in public affairs and the decisions that affect their daily lives. They also underpin the sustainability of the Agency’s socio-economic development sectors. The DRG Center's annual budget is over $115 million, with a staff of over 90, comprised of U.S. Direct Hires (USDHs, foreign service and civil service), contractors, and Fellows. The DRG Center has nine technical teams: Civil Society and Media (CSM); Policy, Coordination, and Integration (PCI); Democratic Elections and Political Processes (DEPP); Governance (GOV), Justice, Rights, and Security (JRS); Democratic Resilience and Innovation (DRI); Evidence and Learning (E&L); Cadre Care and Development (CCD); and Program. The DRG Center's goal is to promote peace, prosperity and freedom around the globe through citizen-responsive governance that respects human dignity and the rule of law. The DRG Center achieves this through high quality support to USAID Missions, generating and disseminating knowledge on best practices, and providing leadership on DRG to the wider USG and the international development community. The Governance Team (GOV) in the DRG Center leads USAID efforts to help countries build self-sustaining public institutions, systems, and processes that are responsive, transparent, effective and accountable to citizens. This includes enhancing the capacity and commitment of public institutions at all levels and across the executive and legislative branches to provide effective, inclusive, and citizen-responsive services (democratic governance), as well as to efficiently and transparently mobilize and spend public resources to promote self-reliance and economic growth (economic governance). As part of its core service mandate, DRG/GOV provides technical expertise, support and leadership on these issues to Agency operating units, interagency teams, and multilateral partners. DRG/GOV works collaboratively with other DRG Teams and DDI operating units to provide USAID Missions and DRG officers worldwide with innovative and integrated technical assistance. Activities include the design and evaluation of field-based activities; training and dissemination of best practices; assessments and evaluations; global mechanism management (including the Active Communities Effective States (ACES) and Public Financial Management II (PFM II) IDIQs); effective stewardship of centrally- managed funds (including the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (EITI), Fiscal Transparency Innovation Funds (FTIF), and Financing Self Development (FSD)); and comparative research and learning efforts. Thematically, DRG/GOV provides leadership in and supports USAID programming in core DRG sub-sectors including: ? Public Administration and Policy Reform (including Civil Service, Human Resources and Procurement Reform): enhance the public administration capacity of key institutions at the national (i.e. finance, national planning, and customs) and subnational (i.e. states, departments and municipalities) levels; improve public service delivery; ? Public Financial Management (Budget, Revenue and Expenditure): improve procurement; ? Macroeconomic and Fiscal Policy: support financial self reliance including leveraging and managing resources in an effective, efficient, transparent, and accountable manner; plan and budget for national development priorities; and explore ways to tap new and underutilized sources of revenues in order to increase public sector resources for development. ? Decentralization and Local Governance ? Anti-Corruption: strengthen transparency and open governance; bolster oversight and audit institutions to fight corruption; ? Good Governance/Transparency and Accountability: improve citizen engagement, outreach and participation; ? Tax Policy and Reform: improve tax administration, ? Domestic Resource Mobilization ? Parliamentary/Legislative Strengthening Wherever possible, DRG/GOV collaborates with other DRG Teams on cross-cutting and integrated themes, including those dealing with justice and rights, political corruption, private sector engagement, and civil society and media strengthening, among others. DRG/GOV also collaborates with other DDI Offices on issues such as Climate Finance. A key focus of GOV’s work supports the development of democratic local governance to create more citizen-responsive and accountable local institutions; increase democratic governance at the local level; provide for the responsible use of public funds; and improve public administration, public financial management, constituent services and public service delivery at the local level. These programs focus on sustainably strengthening public administration and good governance at the local level, including focusing on systems strengthening; improving financial, project, and human resources management; procurement, and policy/strategic planning; enhancing government budget formulation and execution process; and building transparency and public participation mechanisms. These programs work closely with civil society organizations and citizen groups to strengthen citizen engagement, ensure inclusion of marginalized communities, and build civic trust and participation. GOV’s decentralization work focuses on strengthening the inter-governmental coordination framework, enhancing inter-governmental revenue collection and transfers, improving decentralization and devolution processes, and achieving whole-of-government approaches to local and national policy priorities. Both the local governance and decentralization work prioritize stabilization, economic growth and/or democratization as a primary goal, consistent with country context and USG policy objectives. This work also ultimately benefits health, education, and economic development outcomes. Working as part of the GOV Team, the primary focus of the Local Governance Advisor will be to help the DRG Center meet the high demand for local governance technical assistance by serving as a senior technical specialist and resource to the Agency; designing local governance activities, projects and tools; supporting the development of strategy and country-level plans, design, and evaluation of programs; participating in the development of local governance-related performance indicators; conducting DRG and other assessments; integrating GOV best practices and lessons learned into cross-sectoral programming; delivering technical training; leading the development of technical materials related to local governance and decentralization; and providing strategic and technical support to the Agency’s regional bureaus and field missions. On TDY and in Washington, DC, s/he will work closely with USAID and Department of State colleagues to: identify opportunities for USAID to support GOV priorities; design activities responding to those opportunities; work with partners to effectively implement those activities; monitor the impact of those activities; and other associated technical and managerial assistance. Under the direction of the GOV Team Lead, or his/her designated alternate, the Local Governance Advisor will work closely with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders, including other DRG colleagues and teams, USAID staff in other bureaus and operating units, interagency colleagues, and implementing partners.