 So, ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention would like to welcome you all to this discussion of the latest QDDR. Very pleased to be able to host this here at the Institute of Peace. I'm Bill Taylor. I'm the acting executive vice president at the moment. And I'm very pleased to be able to have you all here. I was noticing on the list of RSVPs that there are some of you who were here a year ago when Congressman Perriello started this thing with Kristen, Kristen Lord, my predecessor. And I see some people, I recognize the people who were here. And you know who you are. And thank you for coming back. Rick, it's good to see you. We are very pleased to have this team here. We've got Rick Barton, who I've already recognized, Ambassador Barton, who was the former assistant secretary of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization, which was created in the previous QDDR. So Rick, glad you're here. Is Barbara Burdine here, Ambassador Burdine? No. Yes, Barbara Burdine is here. Ambassador Burdine, welcome. Thank you very much for coming. Glad to have you. She's now the director of Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. And so it's appropriate. Ambassador O'Donnell is here. I saw earlier, very glad to have you, sir, who is advising diplomatic security. And so we're pleased to have you here as well. Ambassador Thorn is right here, right in front of me. Thank you, David. Welcome, Ambassador Thorn. That's the senior advisor to the Secretary Kerry. So we're very glad to have you. I'm Rick. I can see other name tags here. And I will just acknowledge that there are a lot of people from across the street as well as from the non-governmental community that are here, as well as a good number of people, my colleagues here from USIP. I'm glad to have you, George and Peter and team. Andrew, I saw Andrew here. That's good. So welcome, all of you, to this. We are very pleased to have this opportunity to talk through the quadrennial diplomacy, although Alex's development and diplomacy, whatever. One way or the other, QDDR. And we have Ambassador Tom Shannon, Councilor of the Department of State, who is here. Susan Reichley, Councilor to the Acting Administrator. New Administrator named today. Everybody in this room knows, I'm sure. I'm very pleased. Congressman Tom Perryle, I've already mentioned. And Alex Thier, Assistant Administrator for USAID Bureau of Policy Planning and Learning, whom the USAID stole from us, I will just say. He was here as the head of our Afghanistan. He was actually Andrew Wilder's predecessor. And so he was... Your colleagues have thanked me as well. That's not what they said. So as I say, we're very pleased to have started this a year ago. Very pleased, Congressman, to have you back and to describe this with your colleagues. That's written to the QDDR course. It's written to give guidance to the diplomats and the development professionals as they do their work. But it's also of great interest to peace builders, in particular the USIP community. There's a big overlap, but obviously between the development and diplomacy and looking for peaceful resolution of disputes, which is what we do here. Before we... Let's see. Before... We'll hear from the panel and we'll have a bit of a time for discussion. And then we would love to have your questions, in particular that from George Ingram, who says he's got very difficult questions for all of you here. That's what he told me just before. I'm sorry. We run out of time. That's right. So I'd like to introduce the first speaker for today, Congressman Tom Perryle. I've already mentioned, represented Virginia in Congress, special advisor to the prosecutor or special court for Sierra Leone, CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. And he has worked and conducted research in a dozen countries, taught courses on transitional justice at the University of Virginia School of Law and the University of Sierra Leone. This is on the record and we are live streaming, I'm told. So with that, Congressman, over to you. Thank you very much. I really cannot say enough about the partnership with the U.S. Institute of Peace on ideas and substance most of all, but also on logistics. It has been a lot of work to get this launched together. But again, from beginning to end, as you noted, we have worked closely with USIP, with many of the foreign policy experts in this room, some of whom submitted extremely thoughtful ideas to us and we met regularly with outside experts as well as experts throughout the building. So it really has, we have tried to do cast a wide net on that and I think it will be, I think it is reflected in the report. This is in fact the report, though I will let you know this is technically a galley's copy. The 15 were made because we needed them to hold up at launch. But the actual reports will be out. So we thought about spinning it as a desire for paperless reporting, but in fact the reports will come. But we're very excited and the secretary launched this with Deputy Secretary Higginbottom who co-chaired this process with First Rodshaw and then Acting Administrator Lin Hart the other day. We were actually managed to trend on DC Twitter on Tuesday night, which is pretty odd for a quadrennial review, I will say. And again on Wednesday when there was a tweet back and forth between Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry online. So it's been lighting up social media since the report and we're excited about that. Let me just go through a few top lines because there's a lot of brain power in this room and I think it will work best as an exchange. And say a little bit about the four strategic priorities that are outlined at the beginning and then a little bit about how we thought of this in terms of internal reforms. The secretary felt the first QDDR as it should be was comprehensive, really covered everything late a foundation because it was first of its kind, did a lot of reorganization of bureaus and other things. The secretary felt like that was a process that was ongoing and wanted to run a review that was focused on a few key priorities he felt had either shifted in the strategic landscape or were related to internal capabilities that we needed to think about in a particular way. One of the four, first, prevention of conflict and violent extremism and I think it is fair to say the most relevant word here is prevention. We will continue to counter terrorism, that will continue to be something that all agencies in the foreign policy community are part of but that we need to continue to build capabilities emphasis on the issues of prevention. This includes better data and diagnostics, a theme we'll come back to several times on thinking about this but we understand the difficulties of the draw to what is A1 above the fold and how do we address these issues. Second, a very strong lean in I would say on accountable and democratic governance. I was in a meeting earlier today where people said democracy really seems to be on the rise in this report and I think that comes from an understanding that there has been a serious issue of closing spaces. We know civil society groups, many of your organizations face this, USAID state faces this, we do believe the overall trend remains extremely promising in terms of expansion of freedoms but we understand there have been significant threats to that. There's also a lot of attention paid to the issue of corruption which came up a great deal throughout. Corruption not just in a right space but in a PvE space in a barrier to inclusive economic growth space. Inclusive economic growth is the third, David Dorn who runs the shared prosperity agenda for the secretary in the state department has certainly looked into this in terms of our own internal capabilities issues of economic expertise in the department but I also see this and maybe Alex will speak to this as being a convergence of sorts where aid continues the march to eradicate extreme poverty but is also looking at issues of social mobility more broadly in the full path into the global middle class. On the diplomacy side while we will continue to look at growth, there's an understanding that the inclusivity is crucial where you have radical inequalities or where you have real and perceived unfairness or corruption issues you can see instability and other factors grow and then the fourth is climate change this is obviously one of the great existential threats of our time but we are also seeing this as a chance to model a combination of the best of traditional diplomacy with next generation diplomacy and Councillor Shannon will speak to this with the fact that we need in this absolute priority to lock down a traditional global multilateral agreement in Paris but that can and must be complemented with reaching out directly to mayors, faith leaders, CEOs and others to be parts of the solution and a world of diffuse power. I probably already stretched my time and I'm just getting to the internal piece so I'll just say three quick overarching themes that we think ran throughout and they were knowledge, engagement and agility. When we thought about what the comparative advantages are for state and aid we think knowledge and direct engagement have been and remain two clear comparative advantages and agility has always been a challenge and has become more so given issues of complex physical risk that many in our conversations at USIP were raised in elsewhere. On knowledge we must understand that in a current environment where we could benefit from the idea that we had a monopoly on large amounts of information the amount of information we can hold in our institutions is tiny relative to the sheer amount of knowledge that is available in the world. We are looking at data, diagnostics and design and how that can be leveraged in space, how we share that information and manage it, how we get better diagnostics across and we'll geek out on that a little bit in the answers because I know George is going to ask about it. On the engagement side we want to make sure we put a premium on getting our officers overseas, our development professionals overseas. We want to make sure they're spending time outside of embassy walls, engaging directly with the people of those communities. That's what's made Ambassador Shannon the best in the business is the ability to get out and know how to do this and how these communities work. Whether it's the tasking system or physical risk issues we cannot undermine the very comparative advantage of our presence which is engagement and the last is agility and risk. And here there was a very strong consensus particularly for many of the newer officers who've come in that we have to put the mission first, we must protect our people but there's inherent risk in what we do and we want to do this because people have signed up to serve their country in that way so we will be smart about it, we will manage it but we need to figure out in a world that is very fast paced how to get the right people to the right posts with the right skill sets at the right moment certainly Rick and others have been trailblazers on that. And the last word within both the agility and the knowledge set and then I will pipe down for a bit is the issue of better flexibility for our officers over a career whether that's in an economic cone making sure that there's a deepening of economic training, better out tours and incentives for out tours, incentives for making the senior foreign service to have done a tour through a functional bureau or through an out tour or directly into the private sector which again both councilor Shannon and Ambassador Thorn have looked at on the state context. So lots of nuggets to dig into there but since there's a lot more wisdom on the panel I will shush and say those are some of the some of the areas and again a special thank you to everyone for their input. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and so that's the first state view and now the first USAID view Alex there whom I've already introduced and Alex floors yours. Thanks Bill. It's always wonderful to be back home although I'm going to point out that despite the magisterial surroundings when this was my home we were in a building on 17th street that was so dingy it was subsequently torn down. So I applaud your choice of environs for your work. You know when I left USIP I would say that when you go into government which I did about five years ago you envision the opportunity to do things like this to simultaneously be able to step back and look at some of the biggest trends that affect us what's working and what's not how we enhance collaboration across the US government and more broadly and to have a serious amount of time and fantastic colleagues to do that with has been a real blessing and honor and so it's a thanks to Tom other colleagues like Susan and Tom Shen who sat with us on the executive committee and then so many in the broader community who gave their time and input to help us through this process. You know this is an incredible year for us in development and at USAID. We are simultaneously just having launched a national security strategy from the White House a QDDR we are also embroiled right now in negotiating the outcome of the next financing for development agreement which will define how development is financed and motivated and catalyzed over the next decade. The next round of sustainable development goals which will define till 2030 the world's development goals and a climate agreement in Paris and that's honestly not everything that's on the agenda right now there's also World Humanitarian Summit more trade negotiations and so we're in this incredible moment and I think that what we have tried to do and hopefully you'll tell us if we have done in this QDDR is really to speak to from the development perspective where we have come that frankly gives us the capacity to step up and lead in this environment and how we're going to continue to reinforce some of the incredible development gains and changes that we've seen over the last couple of years. Bill mentioned that Gail Smith was nominated today by the president to be the next USAID administrator and it's particularly poignant that Gail was really the both thought and process leader for the creation of the first ever presidential decision directive on development which thanks to a FOIA request despite our best efforts is now available to the public and it reads beautifully it reads like a manifesto and it's something that I think is strongly reinforced in this document because when you look around the world and the four strategic pillars that are in this document what you see is that development sits in many ways at the root of the challenges that the United States faces in the world today and so two things that I really love about this document are one that it continues to reinforce the centrality not of USAID or not of the state department but of development as a fundamental pillar of our national security informed policy objectives and I think also pushes us to think about the ways in which not only our development spending but our diplomacy and everything else is fundamental to the accomplishment of those goals these four pillars that Tom already spoke to to me are this sort of powerful view of what's happening in the world today on one hand you have the most dramatic gains that really we've ever seen in the course of humanity over the last couple of decades and bringing people out of extreme poverty providing access to resources education healthcare so much so that we actually believe that it's feasible to talk about the end of extreme poverty by 2030 but that requires inclusive economic growth and that requires what we do across our government focusing on trade focusing on economic diplomacy focusing on our investments like in agriculture and power all of which are interagency investments it also requires fundamentally the focus on good governance because the one thing that we know from our experience is that the single most salient difference between the countries that succeed and those that fail is about governance at the same time what we also know is that there are things that really fundamentally stand in our path and those are the other pillars of this document it's about being able to address conflict fragility extremism the things that undermine that progress and at the same time ensuring that climate change does not send us backwards and that frame for me those four pillars really speak to I think collectively what our our mission as us aid and more broadly because we have this great harmonic convergence and our goals between state and aid is really about the last thing that I will say which is really important because I think Tom and I we got to travel a little bit together and this speaks to me really personally as somebody who spent a lot of time and failed in fragile states is this issue of risk whether it be physical risk or the ability to take risks in how we communicate and where we invest I had the personal experience when I was managing our work on Afghanistan of losing somebody who worked for us aid under my authority and that's a powerful experience that none of us ever want to go through but the experience that I had that was replicated by conversations that we have had around the world is that our diplomats and our development experts go into this line of duty understanding that there are risks to be taken and believing in the project of American leadership and what good it can bring to the rest of the world and that means they're willing to take on some of those risks and so we have tried to take very seriously the idea of enabling and empowering our staffs around the world to be able to take risks and get their jobs done because they know that they're not just doing it for themselves they're doing it for the greater good not only of our security and prosperity here at home but frankly those of our partners as well we're going to come back this way so the our next speaker is ambassador tom shannon the counselor for the department of state career ambassador in the foreign service ambassador shannon served for nearly four years as the u.s. ambassador to brazil assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs among other posts and we are very pleased that ambassador shannon is here sorry now thank you very much bill it's a great pleasure to be here and a real honor to be sitting at the panel with everybody who did all the work so and and also to have a chance to have a conversation with all of you today because this is obviously something that's very important to us although if if i'd been asked i would have taken issue with the qddr in terms of its name because a review means that you are looking at something again it is a relook at something and i don't think there's anything re about this qddr it really is a look into the future in a pretty dramatic and interesting way and in a way that the few first qddr wasn't the first qddr was really trying to get us straight institutionally for the challenges that we're facing but i think what this qddr is is anticipate the world that is to come and look into the 21st century and try to figure out what are the policy challenges we're going to face and how we get there and for me one of the most interesting and the most challenging for us has to do with climate change and so i'll spend my few minutes talking about that because as the secretary noted and as deputy higginbottom noted noted the other day one of the things we're going to be doing in in because of the qddr is looking at how we address climate change not just at the national level but at the subnational level and by subnational level we really mean municipalities and using engagement in municipalities as tom noted to reach out to corporations to faith-based leaders and organizations and all of the civil society and economic components of large municipalities first and foremost because as we attempt to address global climate change through global agreements we are also realizing that we can't be tethered or limited by the pace of global agreements and we have to look for ways to advance on climate change issues as quickly and as smartly as possible we've already showed that we can do this in our bilateral bilateral agreement with china and we think that we can find ways to incorporate work that's already being done around municipalities and climate change by mayor bloomberg and others and connect this to other municipalities around the world that are looking for tool sets and access to information that will allow them to begin to address environmental sustainability in an urban environment and some of this goes back to work that began under secretary clinton when the special envoy for intergovernmental relations rita joe lewis began negotiating a series of subnational dialogue agreements with countries like china and brazil but but it also goes back to relationships that were built between state department epa our department of interior and municipalities in the united states and outside the united states and i had the pleasure of working in one of these efforts between philadelphia and rio something called the joint initiative on urban sustainability or juice which was all designed around helping municipalities exchange best practices in both in development construction and job training to ensure that lead technologies were being brought into cities and that workers were being trained to to work and build with these kind of technologies as cities began to rebuild themselves which was something philadelphia was going through and it's something rio was going through in the run up to the 2016 olympic games and so i i found in this a really rich field of engagement that allowed our embassy to to work across communities where historically would not been present and to do so in ways that were immediately relevant to the people we were working with and so in this regard i think we have an opportunity to open up a new vista of diplomatic activity and to do it in ways that are going to bring in non-traditional partners both on the us side and in the countries we're working with and so i i'm quite excited about this i think this is really innovative and important and although it only figures in a small part of the text i think going forward it's actually going to be a big part of what we do so thank you tom i appreciate it and uh susan rightly last but not least uh introduces directly counselor to us a id prior to her position there she served as assistant assistant to the administrator for policy planning and learning so we have that well that office well represented here today and before that as the deputy coordinator in the former office of the coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization at the state department um and she served in columbia hady nicaragua and russia where i first met susan many years ago and uh we are delighted to have you great thank you thank you so much um to us ip and bill for hosting all of us today and for all of you being here i know i'm sort of the wrap up before we get into discussion which is really what we want is a conversation about the q2dr but i did want to make a couple points from the start i mean first uh there's always going to be discussion of does a q2dr matter and i had the good fortune of uh living through and experiencing and participating heavily in the first q2dr uh and so i can say from that experience four and a half years ago to what we've accomplished all of us over and i say all of us in the community who work in foreign affairs from diplomacy to development a lot has been done and as tom said that was sort of our chance to really restructure get it right for us in the development community um as uh our former deputy administrator said last week at csis uh you know usa id was really eviscerated and when we had the presidential policy uh uh uh ppd six the global development policy that was our vision but the q2dr was our playbook and if you look at what we've all accomplished over the last um last you know almost five years in really bringing development on par with diplomacy and making it core to our national security and our foreign policy uh i think there's a lot that's been accomplished from obviously having a much more evidence-based uh transparent as george would want to remind us a decision making process so that we can make the best decisions make it moving forward from transparent strategies to obviously evaluations that really help us make the changes that are absolutely critical to delivering the results on the ground for the people we serve but also most importantly as well for the american people so a lot was accomplished but now moving forward this really provide us an opportunity and under tom's incredible leadership uh to to have us look forward what are the biggest challenges and you've had a chance to already hear from the panelists so i'm not going to reiterate what they said but there's two things i wanted to highlight one thing that we signaled in the first q2dr was obviously preventing and responding to conflict and crisis in a better way um and that led to a lot of things and changes including obviously standing up cso and and how we've really looked at prevention but what you clearly see in this q2dr is a much more forward-leaning uh an aggressive approach to mitigating and preventing violent extremism and as we know and particularly what we've all experienced over the last year we need to increase our capabilities and that's ultimately what a q2dr is about it's about how do we look at these challenges and how do we use the best and the brightest of our capabilities that exist with both within the department and within us a id and with the development community with all of you so that we can tackle this and as we've learned over the years obviously violent extremism is is very complex and i think uh clearly the literature shows that just attacking it with development is not enough we have to understand what are the drivers of violent extremism and i'm so pleased to see some of the authors of the policy that we issued a couple years ago that really tried to take the thinking forward and now we have to put the organizational capabilities behind that and as you saw in the president's summit back in february which had 65 ministers come together but we know that this is not just a government uh challenge this is a whole of society challenge so he brought together obviously members of civil society as well as the private sector media and got all of us together for four days really looking at this challenge and what are the capabilities that we need in order to address it so that's the first thing i just want to highlight the second thing is something that alex touched on very eloquently regarding risk and that was something i think the team the q2dr team took again a very forward leading approach to and and we greatly appreciate it i know within us a id that we weren't just looking at physical risk which is often the risk that's defined but looking at the programmatic risk at the reputational risk at how do we deliver on our promise of development on our promise of diplomacy in order to do the best work possible for the american people and so i'm really thrilled to see that in this q2dr it commits us uh not just to working internally to look at how do we define risk and how do we tackle some of these challenges to in order to ensure our diplomats and our development professionals can get beyond the wire can really do evidence-based uh work on the ground to deliver but it's a dialogue with all of you so that we can come up with the flexibilities and the most forward-leaning approaches that we um we possibly can so i think this is the start of a dialogue it's not the end a lot of tremendous work went into this but look forward to working with all of you on these issues and more thank you susan beginning of the dialogue that's a good uh uh introduction to this part of the conversation so now that you have heard for a half an hour now from this group um i would love and i think they would love to hear from you your questions your observations thoughts on uh on this q2dr or the past one as it leads up into this one yes george good for you good for you now i try to convince him that if he addressed you as representative it would catch your former position and your current position but he couldn't find that in the diplomatic playbook like many times i have not taken george's advice usually you were correct um and and let me surprise you no first of all let me commend you for conducting a truly transparent open consultative process um which i believe is a model for the way the u.s. government should develop policy so thank you and i thank you and your colleagues for that um but let me get off my normal hobby horse and talk about another interest which is the qtdr nicely talks about democracy economic inclusion fragility and where it brings those together in several places one place is it talks about in references the new deal for fragile states um over the last year there have been at least four studies i know of which have all come to the conclusion that none of the parties are devoting to the new deal the commitments that either the donors or the pilot countries committed to under the structure of the new deal um i'm going to take the reference to the new deal in the qtdr as an indication that it is something that you all think is an important structure um is a way for the u.s. and other countries to move ahead and trying to move countries to political economic social resilience and wonder from you or susan or alex is to whether or not there's something behind that and deeper than what we see on paper is to how we might move ahead on the new deal i'm going to let you guys take first shot and then i might make a point behind it um well you know actually there's something that susan i have both done a bunch of work on and i i think that everybody as you have indicated from the things that you're reading uh and melissa is sitting next to you um everybody is looking at whether this structure works um the reason that we endorse it strongly in the national security strategy in the qtdr is because i think the new deal fundamentally recognizes some shortcomings in the way that we have approached addressing fragile states and we are still trying to figure out how to strengthen that framework but it really captures a couple of really important things uh that sit at the heart of where i think many of us and you're sitting in usip and you know this building is devoted to writing lessons learned about fragile states experiences um the need for a mutual compact commitments that are both political as well as economic in order to dress the underlying causes of the reason that you're having the discussion in the first place is fundamental that's not going to go away and i think that the way in which the new deal talks about that and then translates it into this thing called a compact is important and needs to be reinforced the second thing is that we all know that we as donors uh and the outside need to be a more effectively coordinated on many of us sitting in this room have had the experience of sitting in the finance minister's office that's probably where i first met bill uh sitting in the finance minister's office in a row of donors and who's next going in to talk about their own program it doesn't work uh it doesn't work as well as it needs to and mandating uh both normatively and actually the type of cooperation and coordination among donors is is absolutely fundamental i think we've seen that it has had shortcomings so far in the implementation so i believe that our speaking to it is recognizing that it's still really matters to us as a structure and what it the underlying challenges that it recognizes and then specifically and you see this in here there is a process that is being undertaken within our government to think about how we as a government can work better and more effectively on these things doing conflict assessments together in a way that cuts across even more deeds than represented at this table um is absolutely important thinking about we'll talk about this probably for eternity but thinking about flexible funding flexible ways in which we can get people into the field quickly to deal with challenges it's not something that we will forever solve but that we need to be more effective at doing and i think that we have recognized in this document after the good work done in the last one that there are further steps that we can take to to continue that yeah now we just we're gone so i was just going to say more generally i think there is an effort and an enthusiasm and it's been getting piloted in the last uh few years to find places where we can actually put together solid diagnostics that give us a framework every country is going to be um uh going to have their own dynamics and one tiny little model of this that partially came out of the qtdr that just this week that's been fun is getting a group of people from state over to usa id looking at constraints to growth models so here on a different issue um where we we don't want to have sort of the what i've joked is this sort of steven colbert truthiness approach to what's actually the barrier to constraints to growth there are diagnostics there's data we want to do that um as i said to someone yesterday in the group and i don't think they took it well but i meant it well um this qtdr is not quite a geek insurgency but it is geek empowerment um in the sense that for those people doing some of the data science for those people who want to find a framework in these places and turn best practices you're always going to want a chief of mission to all uh to ultimately use the wisdom test that's the experience that cannot be recreated anywhere else um but it should also be it can still be informed by data and diagnostics you need the ground truth you need the wisdom but in many of these cases the idea it was a metaphor because state and aid actually did work really well together in this process so here you have something that's inclusive economic growth oriented it's data and diagnostic oriented and it's state and aid trying to learn from each other in the process and so i think it's not going to be a seismic shift overnight but i think that's the kind of thing with the new model the new deal and others uh that that will be a playing a bigger role good did you have a another question thanks uh rebecca zimmerman from rand um so uh one of the things reading this that strikes me that i'm thrilled about is that this qtdr talks not only about risk mitigations we've discussed but what i see is being kind of the other side of that coin which is staff care and you know making sure that the people who serve us our country in the most dangerous places get the highest quality of care and one of the things that i sort of have a question about um is as we're thinking about both of these issues risk mitigation and staff care um you know there there are places in the qtdr where we talk about sort of the larger family of state and aid as inclusive of contractors local hires and so forth so how how much can the qtdr do to affect the reality for risk and for care for those those communities that are not permanent federal hires i think you're gonna have several people want to come in on this uh susan you want to start sure yeah this is an issue we've been deeply concerned about it at usa ideas they i know they have been at the department because the world we're working in now is vastly different than when i joined up 25 years ago and um clearly the stress that we're not only putting on our foreign service officers but obviously our foreign service nationals our partners putting them in harm's way obviously in a much more direct way than we have um in the past we need to really look at these issues so one of the things that you saw it signaled in the qtdr um when we talk about non permissive environments so we've gone through a very lengthy diagnostic over the last year and working closely with our colleagues in state department uh for us to designate 18 countries as countries that are non permissive not just for security reasons it could be because of poor infrastructure because of really an inability to get out into some of the most difficult parts of the country um just really challenging environments to work in and so what we've done and uh is to put together an entire program now that is dedicated to working in these 18 countries and that means everything from not just policy guidance and training and tools but bringing them here to washington having them go through uh three-day intensive training on these issues such as staff care as well as for the families because the toll it's taking on our families and the assessments that we've done we have right now a nine-month assessment that's coming to a close and we finally have the data on what has been the impact of the last decade on on our agency in particular and a commitment and particularly by our acting administrator um al lenhardt who's really been committed to making these reforms moving forward and and that's part of it then with the risk assessment as we're working with our colleagues in state department then what what does the data tell us where are the greatest uh challenges for our staff how do we move it to the field and most importantly how do we involve the entire community so that we can do better because uh the risks aren't getting any lighter and the environment is probably going to more be more complex than less complex just a very quick note on that um particularly the leadership of deputy secretary higginbottom who's really focused on wellness and health issues in this context and it i've been informed apart i did get to serve on the veterans affairs committee that we have learned lessons we've learned lessons from not doing this well enough about this needing to start before people go out into these environments care while they're there and care when they return also beyond the permissive environment issue and the risk issue um just looking at at the the diplomacy and diplomatic family in a way uh so the issue of professional spouses uh has has come up a lot whether that's a tandem couple or whether that's another career and some of the leave without pay opportunities um expansions and and other issues are meant to reflect the fact that uh that that we're in that kind of environment want to be thinking of care and broadly speaking and again the deputy secretary has done a lot of work in that area good i'm going to come over here where they were thank you so much i'm jim sheer at the wilson center and congrats to this team for a terrific rollout and also the usip for book ending this process of the start to finish it's been great um just i'm thinking if i'm looking back 50 years ago diplomats will be scratching their head wondering what's going on here and i think that's great i mean i think there's a lot of new themes and issues that really go to the future it's it's a very future oriented which is terrific two very sort of narrowish questions um first of all budgetary impact i mean what will folks uh hill appropriators be looking at especially when you talk about a more skilled diverse workforce uh with greater opportunities for in career education for tours out of the building are you looking for a float uh i mean that's that's a real thing uh but very important absolutely and secondly um regarding that third d across the river uh do you guys have a short elevator speech in terms of how the third d can best support and help and enhance what you're trying to do with these two d's thank you sure what's that so on the budget issue i'll start there one of the selling points to me not that i needed a selling point to become to take the qtdr job but um was the fact that it was co-located under the deputy secretary for management and resources um policy and planning was certainly very involved on both the state and the aid side um but the but the idea here is this should inform budget it's not a budget document per se but what i think we saw was that these were conversations going on at the same time and in the same with the same set of actors so as we were finding getting findings from the field we're reporting those in real time to the co-chairs um on both the state and the aid side and the executive committee as we're forming proposals that's reflecting what's going forward the budget process etc the secretary said early on and i think it was right we didn't want to come out with a document that says um well if we only had more money we would do all these things um on the other hand if we only had more money there were there really some things we would like to do and be able to do uh and increasing capabilities is difficult uh the washington post piece uh snarkily or wittily uh dealt with that issue today and it's the qtdr is the most depressing document i've read uh article if you saw that um and uh and so i think that those issues are real on the budget side um and i think that uh there's an ongoing effort obviously to to deal with how those investments are made we do not see a whole lot of things in the world that we can stop doing um we certainly looked for those um but but we remained the go-to uh in these areas so i think in the budget sense it's a really healthy dialogue between the budget process the management process we're going to be putting together implementation guidance here uh over the weeks ahead um and i think that's how that'll work elix just to quickly answer the the dod question um you know i think that what we've found where we do it that a joined up understanding of the underlying causes and consequences of political and development and humanitarian um impacts or the situation in those environments can and should deeply inform how do d also not only deploys its resources but even designs its resources and thinks about where it should be and what it should be focusing on we've actually lived this very powerfully this year and thinking about how do we look at places like the sahel uh places where there are challenges of rising extremism but that we clearly know that underlying causes have to do with other things and our ability to share data to do joint assessment to talk about effective institution building the importance of governance and some of these long-term trends um i think is you know then really makes it a 3d's enterprise and so i think as we've talked about how we improve our own assessments and understanding of what we do and how we engage that um having the department of defense as a full partner in that process is obviously critical if i could just add i mean one of those for me as i noted one of the striking things about the q d dr is that it's really us on our tippy toes kind of looking at the horizon and trying to look beyond it and so the head scratching is not just going to come from diplomats 50 years ago it's going to come from lots of people as a as a try to understand what it is we're talking about and it really is the world we're moving into and so we're going to have to do a lot of outreach and a lot of educating and and sharing our ideas about you know what it is we see coming at us and what we're going to need to get this done thank you hi there i'm jonglin with us global leadership coalition congratulations guys you made it i want to um indeed commend your outreach and of course add one of the pieces from the sort of template of the q d dr certainly to encourage and hope that you'll be doing this to engage congress i think that they need to hear it there's a lot here that they will like and i think it's an important piece to that and we'd be interested you know quickly in passing and your thoughts on that but i'd like to pick up on one of the themes and they're about partnerships and it ties in with budgets i mean on the one hand we're looking in a world of limited budgets we're not expecting anytime soon to see new budgets but on the other hand we're seeing a change in the world which you all know and have said in other places in the developing world rather than the 80 percent of all capital flows that official development use assistance used to be it's now 10 percent which just changes the world in which what official assistance or public monies can and should do this document talks a lot about partnerships and there are a lot of terrific examples in the new alliance for food security in power africa but i'd be interested in your thoughts from the inside a little bit about how you're thinking about taking what are a number of fabulously successful examples that can sometimes seem like one offs how are you thinking about making this how you do business today sure uh so the hill relationship has been a constructive one in fact we did a conference call right after the launch and not a single person raised the issue of why didn't you talk to us about the report which i took as a victory i'm sure they don't come out later but we did engage a lot and it's an important dialogue and the secretary specifically had in the report the idea that he wants to have a direct dialogue with the hill on the risk question um this has got to be a joint uh decision in a democracy between those elected those running state about these questions they're they're sensitive questions they need needs to be a transparent dialogue they need to be partners on that we we've talked in a way about how the last qtdr focused on whole of government and this qtdr focused on whole of america when you think about the relative amount of us government power in the world um there has been a rise of the rest and we need to keep in mind that that's a positive story that was kind of the point all along from 1945 forward was that the greatest generation said we want to bring other nations up we want them to share in collective security so that rise of the rest is part of the grand strategy that has existed for uh for over 70 years um however it complicates the ways in which we we operate into these partnerships um on the other hand america if you take it as a whole the fullness of our financial power our cultural power um you know the the reach of people in geos etc um it really is just phenomenal to think about how much influence we as an entirety of people have around so we do want to think about how we leverage these things the challenge we have and we've talked about this in conversations is what i sometimes call the um spinach versus donuts problem which is that we are often going into countries and saying we will give you a relatively small amount of money in exchange for extremely strict rules which i happen to think are good ones no corruption you have to be transparent uh you can't you should use clean energy etc etc these are rules that i like in place there are other people now offering more money with fewer restrictions and so i think at the end of the day our policies are good ones in that we are asking people to eat spinach right uh you want good governance you want uh sustainability but it is not always the most attractive choice set so as we think about these partnerships and how we leverage this we must realize there's an actual battle of ideas going on in some of this space and it's not just about leveraging power but it's about the fact that we are committed to a belief in an open global rules based system and talking about why that's under threat and why that's a value going forward it just to add to that john and i think that those are great points i i mean clearly the first Q2DR we laid out the commitment to partnership and you know clearly signal science technology and innovation what today now is born as the global development lab where are very important in order to move the needle on not just development but diplomacy and how to use it effectively i think what's different and getting back to the capabilities as you said how are these not one-off things that yes it's great that the Ebola grand challenge ended up in uh you know a wedding dressmaker in Baltimore who partnered with John Hopkins to come up with a more efficient Ebola suit and that's a nice story but how do you actually partner in a way that does really lead to big results because it's not about us it's not about ODA anymore and I think one of the things that this Q2DR really does is lay out those capabilities so that it does get into the DNA that we have the flexibility and I'll just give you know the development innovation accelerator that enables us to partner in a way so that as Tom said they actually do need to look at our rules and our regulations and the things that we strive for but we're a partner as opposed to a donor and that dramatically changes the relationship and that's how we're looking at our roles now and with our new foreign service officers and new officers we've hired over a thousand people over the last four years coming into USAID getting them to think about their role differently in partnership and to change change that dynamic so David Reed the World Wildlife Fund I cannot help but echo the compliments that have given to Tom and the team for the inclusiveness and the recognition of non-state actors partnerships and enforcing this this new vision for our overseas engagements no I pick up very much the newness the the richness as Ambassador Shannon has done the new dimension of climate change there's been added to this I can't help but then pick up Alex your comment that we do we recognize the impacts of climate change we do not want them to undermine that our other three strategic priorities and yet in reading the document which has been superficial in my part so far the linkages among the four are very weak and in fact the truth is that the changes that we are experiencing today are at a pace they're absolutely numbing we cannot understand if just look at what the role of water scarcity in the Syrian civil war look at what's happening on our border look at what masses just said about the mega drought 2050 well I've just got back from San Antonio in the Midwest and this is not a 2050 mega drought we are in it we're the cusp of it and this is being repeated around the world as I look to your answers and how to address that I turned the part on the hub data collection and I congratulate you I think this is absolutely fundamental the challenge I believe that you face one is not just beginning to make the linkages among these four strategic pillars but also how do you go to interpret and analyze that data the data sources are exceptionally rich whether private sector whether it's Cargill ABM Mars whoever is there but how are you going to integrate it and interpret it analyze it and share it so that there is a coordinated response across our government to these challenges that we can't understand it's a great slightly depressing but great question I actually wanted to pause for one second because I do not want to forget that there are there are two people in this room for whom without whom we would not have a Q2DR and the even funnier part of that story is that after the Q2DR hopefully they will continue as great partners with each other and that is Caroline Waddams and Noam Unger who if you don't know them are wonderful fantastic individuals in their own right they are also a couple and they really helped keep us all together literally and and figuratively yeah but I really wanted to make sure that we acknowledge the the incredible contribution that you two made I think that the you know yes with your children do you still have them that you know in the fall the president Obama issued an executive order that I think is actually about to become a model for a number of other countries as well which requires us to look at all of the investments that we make across the board as a government and the impact that they have on climate and it's it is the similar sort of mental shift that we actually made a few years ago on gender to make sure that this deep rooted fundamental aspect that really in many ways affects everything we do and our goals becomes a part not just of some sideline thing to your point about making sure it's integrated across the agenda but that it actually is the agenda and that it's integral to everything that we do and just to pick up on what Susan said you know we um it when you look at the big things that we are doing on when you look at feed the future and our investments in agriculture we are looking at agriculture not just as a way to feed people but as a way to protect the planet ensuring that everything from water resources to fertilizer are a fundamental part of the way we think about this because we know that they that in order to feed the planet and the nine billion people we're going to have that that this is fundamental to not undermining our goals the global development lab is undertaking a grand challenge that's looking at things like water desalination because we all know that water is is going to be a driver for years to come as tom already mentioned our focus on municipalities is very deeply tied with the understanding that some of the world's greatest cities whether they're new york um or um in other parts of the world um are going to be and already are deeply affected by climate change and there is no path to sustainable development for people and planet that doesn't have us thinking about those things um and so I think we have tried to think hard about the ways in which it impacts not only our grand strategic thinking but specifically the investments that that we're going to be making if I could just jump on that for a second in return in regards to climate change in cities I mean it's a great question how do you integrate this stuff how do you connect at all um and for me one of the the exciting things about looking at at climate change and working with cities is that we're connecting our climate change agenda with a governance agenda and so to a certain extent we're kind of linking on the ground because as the mayor of philadelphia when we were doing the joint initiative for urban sustainability a mayor nutter used to tell me every mayor is an environmentalist because every mayor has to address sustainability issues and as we get deeper into this I think we're going to learn that municipalities can be a really interesting place to integrate all the themes of the qddr whether it's countering violent extremism whether it's governance issues whether it's inclusive economic growth and you can do it in in a single place with a variety of actors so this could be a very interesting diplomatic experiment for us thank you hi alex tears get the congressional research service but more importantly i think friend to nom and caroline uh um i i wanted to make three quick points the the very first is is i i really commend the very strong statement in this document on risk acceptance both physical and otherwise i think that's a message that's going to go very well in the hill and i haven't seen that expressed as strongly anywhere else from the department in particular so i i really commend that that statement there have been already a few questions on resources from the hill but no one's asked yet how this might dovetail with a really interesting discussion that's going on on foreign relations authorization and it was much clearer where the last qddr might need some new authorities it's not clear to me that this one has anything specific in that regards but that would be certainly useful to know and and lastly uh the implementation guidance was mentioned i would love to know a little bit more about how that's going to work and what the process is going to be and whether there's going to be any kind of ability of external actors whoever they might be to scrutinize that implementation thanks um so thanks and thanks for the uh the input that was a great gathering that that you help put together on the hill bipartisan really substantive um and those dialogues have continued certainly the risk conversation i think has gone extremely well when the cameras are off i think that the question is going to be whether we're ready to have that adult conversation when the cameras are on and whether we can disaggregate some of the different elements of that but i do get the sense that that that message has gotten through and that there that there is a desire to to have a very serious conversation about it and we certainly want to do that on the authorization issue we tended the general rule that that heather and others asked us to think about was largely speaking to work within the budget we had and within the authorization but not be constrained if something really needed to be raised to raise it i think with the there's not a tremendous amount of granularity in a lot of areas of the document that's going to play out in the implementation guidance our general rule was if you have to use two acronyms in a single sentence it's probably too specific uh when you start getting into you know dases and and coms and the rest so um i think that you will see that it's really the the same dialogue that's already been going just some of those ideas that were originally in a draft that was maybe twice as long will be pulled in and i think that's rightly so you want a strategic review to do a high level sense of the overall directions you're going and we tried to meet that standard so it will certainly continue to be um uh a partnership with lots of stakeholders as we think about that uh some of it will just gets into so much state department ease that you know it's going to be a very limited number of folks who want to read those but we will we will work on that together so i think in general with the authorization issue we certainly met with uh staff already and many others at state and aid have done so um i think it'll be very interesting to see i think the prospects of passage are probably relatively low but i think that the dialogue itself is going to be incredibly interesting um and change or the the prospect of change can be scary but i think you have some really serious people uh on the hill on both sides that are thinking about this in ways that have not been part of the debate for a while we've tried to make available whatever findings we've had uh to them and we think that should be a you know a partnership going implementation so implementation again we're working on those it's ongoing there are parts of our team that have already sort of shifted three or four weeks ago from the the document language to the implementation what we're looking at over the next five or six weeks is doing a series of events uh i think tanks around town on some of the key themes that's partly going to be action forcing to try to get implementation guidance together or get another round of inputs on those details so i think this is sort of the the goal of the summer yeah and just to add having lived through the implementation of the last Q2DR i think it's an excellent question because um you're so relieved when it's done uh but it really is about making you know living up to the promises and the vision that's in the document and i know on our side um you know we took it very seriously and just constantly sort of went back and said okay we said to this what did this mean and sitting down with our counterparts at state department how do we really deliver on it and making adjustments i mean obviously there were things in the last Q2DR we said well that was a great idea but we really can't deliver on it but let's think about how we achieve that same objective so i think there's that same level of commitment for sure this time i'm laren oles with the hewlett foundation and i'll add to all the congratulations especially on the outreach and consultation and i just hope your colleagues are paying attention to this and maybe think of this as a model going forward on similar exercises um i want to ask a question about what i didn't see in this Q2DR that was in the first Q2DR and i know there's a lot of things that were in the that were not in this one that were in the first one and thank goodness for that um but this had to do uh with the issue of a recommendation in Q2DR one around an integrated national security budget and moving exploring and moving in that direction personally i go back and forth whether it's a good idea or or not and and see disadvantage advantage but saying that aside you know that the alex here and you talk about defense resource allocation now that can have an impact on what we do in development and diplomacy and so much continuation of the emphasis on the 3ds etc etc um so we're in a very different in budget landscape than when the first Q2DR was was developed um and now you're finding yourself in this weird situation where you're in the bucket with the rest of domestic programs fighting over resources and defenses in their own category with their their strong congressional support for that um i'm curious during the deliberation over this Q2 this version of the Q2DR was this issue was there any discussion about it should you explore it was it it it was was not worthwhile to take on or was there any consideration taking that up again it was not something again part of that was just the nature of the fact that we knew from the beginning we were going to be looking at a very limited number of resources um our number of issues and i think also as you noted the budget environment i mean in some ways the first Q2DR came out in a different in budget environment than it was written in um thanks to some of us not being good enough to get reelected so i think we were trying to operate within that yes hi everybody nasa ni nasa at the center for global development so excited to hear about the geek revolution i think any of you who know me would be able to validate how thrilled i am to hear that folks are learning more about constraints analyses um but i think i'd add to that that the constraint didn't seem to me to be whether data and analysis was available so there are those pockets of excellence within an outside of state in usa id as um previous speakers have mentioned that make that kind of data and analysis available but the trick is who decides what data we use and what analysis we use and how we use it and similarly on budget flexibility um there's more in there than we think there is but the big question is who gets to to decide what we're going to stop doing to do something else and on what basis i wondered how you thought about sure so um the uh i i actually think that we see three things together data diagnostics and i do think design the third d is really important because it's not just who decides it but how it's communicated um i mean i'm a reasonably intelligent guy and i can get lost pretty quickly in a mountain of data um but if someone knows how to visualize that uh it's a big deal we have a story of the secretary being handed materials that were data visualized in a particular way going into a meeting with a foreign head of state and it affects how you can literally use it in traditional diplomacy so it's it's not just what data is available as was raised it's not just the what we do with that in terms of actual production of information it's how we communicate it and i do think they're relationships and that's one of the things we heard very strongly at both chief submissions conference since we began this is ambassadors want this information they're just incredibly busy they don't have time to sit on twitter and facebook and catch everything that's trending or to look to read through a number of private sector accounts of what's going on with youth employment in a country it's about how we can commute how we can take that information um and be able to say look this is why not including women in the economy directly translates into x issue of fragility right so the way we thought about it and adam riggs is sitting up here he's worked with thorn and and with deputy secretary hayden bottom on some of these issues in terms of the knowledge management we've got a great team coming together age really been i think ahead of the curve or ahead of state i don't know where that puts it on the curve uh on on some of these issues in terms of looking at data and diagnostics we look at it as both a care as a supply issue and a demand issue um on the supply side we have to have better uh data diagnostics and design on the demand side it's partly making the product better um and then in some cases it is going to have to be a little bit more of a demanded you can always say for example we're not there yet but in an integrated country strategy you would never want to tell a chief of mission you need to do what the data says but you can say you must engage with it you must look at it and be able to say okay here's what they said what's wrong with this so that we understand it so it's going to be a process over time and we're going to do it slow um partly because of budget constraints and partly because you don't want to do it the wrong way so i think what we've seen and and really cso deserves a lot of credit for being a thin end of the spear on this humanitarian information unit as well you have these pockets um that have been quite good and i think the question we're trying to do is to say how do we get these capabilities we know that our friends and other agencies are are ahead of this and i think that we need for a civilian lead foreign policy to make sure that states in that game i just say something really quickly uh on that and first of all just to apologize profusely because i have to leave uh right after this uh in two minutes and i'd like nothing more than to spend more time with all of you but i had a prior engagement um you know the thing that i find in connecting back to the question about the hill um what has empowered us uh on the hill is our own data and our own understanding which is now more available and more transparent than i think it's ever been about what gains we are making with our investments and where we aren't you know the thing that i always you always hear when you go up to the hill is don't just tell us about the successes tell us about the failures which often seems like a gotcha trap when you then go and testify and all they focus on are the failures and tom has has talked about you know not being judged by the worst dollar spent because that's not where we're going to succeed um but when we go up armed with a deeper understanding based on the much more intensive approach that we take now to independent evaluation it's a very very powerful tool and like tom says i mean you can change the tone and course of a meeting in the white house or on capitol hill or in an international engagement when we go in armed with the data that we increasingly have at our fingertips but it's uneven um our use of it is uneven um and improving our skills creating this entity that tom has been a strong advocate for um so that people in the field are spending less of their time doing the data calling and being able to reach back to washington frankly to get that done so they can go out and be talking to their counterparts um in a wired world is exactly the direction that we should be going in angela keong institute for inclusive security um again congratulations to all of you i'm really excited about this cutie you are much more so than the first one which i was involved in um so i look at the we should have t-shirts um i look at the strategic priorities in this and particularly the first two um preventing mitigating conflict and violent extremism um but really all of them and i wonder if you'll use the implementation strategies as an opportunity to draw more explicit blankages between national policies on women peace and security and the qtdr because i think that there are quite a few references and i appreciate the full document but quite frankly as i look at the executive summary it's a little bit light and i think there's a lot that state and aid are doing in this area and more that could be done and the qtdr could be a great tool for accomplishing some of those objectives so a couple of quick things one i think that would make a great op-ed you could write about what's good in the qtdr and what more could be done based on those standards i think this goes back to alex's point is that this is a time where part of how people can inform that whether that's through you know memos sent to us formally or informally or getting out in the public discourse and saying look if you guys are serious about x in here here's what it would mean i find that to be a very healthy uh part of the dialogue we did want to be extremely clear in this that there were things that were emphasized in the last qtdr that we're not going to take up a lot of space in this but it was not because they were not important but because they continued to be important and were on track and certainly the uh the key of including women and girls and everything that we do was something signaled in the executive summary in the annex it was the second cable secretary kerry sent out as secretary of state um similar cyber issues we don't spend a lot on here they were raised in the first one that's because we're continuing to build those capacities so i think that's part of what uh this should be read in the context of just to add i particularly um with preventing and mitigating violent extremism i mean as you know that is a whole work stream coming out of the summit that both state and us aid are dedicating a tremendous amount of time with our international partners because as we know women and girls are not only part of the solution they are often the pointy end of the spear in order for us to really really help countries make some real changes there and as was pointed out earlier either by alex or tom that getting back to climate that we looked at sort of the issue of women and girls it was so fundamental as you know with the first qtdr and obviously has changed very much the way um we do work at us aid that that is the um gold standard and that's how we have to be thinking about climate issues the way we think about women and girls now within development is the way we have to be thinking about climate layer thompson international center for research on women this is actually a follow-up question and it's funny that you and i sat next to each other that was not intentional um but i actually wanted to to push back on the concept that we have fundamentally changed the way that we're doing this when it comes to gender um we thank you for your consultative process we spent two hours pulling from coalitions on gender-based violence peace and security girls child marriage sexual reproductive health and rights a number of issues talking about where there are concrete roadblocks to actually implementing the female empowerment and gender equality strategy and these sorts of things the climate action plan is a good example there's zero reference to females gender women girls nothing we're still having a hard time doing this we talked a bit in that discussion about some operational fixes that might be have some potential so it's curious if there was any thinking given to detailing foreign service officers to some of these uh thematic areas that aren't typically where careers are made um i know there was thinking about that can you comment on where that is process wise and then it's interesting to me that the financial inclusion piece is the one that stuck which wasn't at all what we were advocating for and i also heard it talking about it mentioned on the financing for development call today um and tony pippo's call so i'm just curious if that was the one issue the gender community didn't come forward with why is that the one that you're focusing on here thanks uh so i totally accept your premise that this that we are far from where we need to be on this being mainstreamed and accepted in the norm i think where we are is that we've established um advocate space and advocates within the building who continue to do the work of trying to make it more um mainstreamed in the conscience consciousness of everything that we're thinking about um i do think we've looked at it uh strongly i don't know how but whether it's referenced but in the pve cve space it's certainly something that was a big part of the thinking around that on the issue as i said earlier um we are creating greater incentives for people to go through either functional bureaus which is where some of these issues tend to come up more or out towards to other places where some of these things could be worked on so that is absolutely something that uh that we that's actually one of the more specific things that we name so in the implementation guidance that's where now some of those suggestions are being uh litigated out and you know keep pushing so i had two questions one just goes back to alex's point about governance um and building governance up in in partner countries so um uh just in terms of some some past cases a really good way to do that is to actually have like sister cities or to have people who are actually mayors or or have experience of governance here um the a's and work with folks who would be working on governance in the in the municipality so i'm wondering like how governance building through municipality to be a municipality might work and then the second question was regarding um regarding kind of the intersection with using data um and and also with counter corruption and just anything else that is an operation that involves data so i am i should also mention i'm currently the department of defense um so so um so there's a lot so there's a lot of intelligence that's produced and a lot and a lot of it could be useful for things like contra corruption or contra narcotics or some of the other operations that are mentioned here and they could be useful for a data a data centric analytical process which would provide guidance or provide direction on how to do like a counter corruption operation or even just provide you the schematics but um uh like how do you think that data could leverage existing intelligence or intelligence maybe that doesn't exist to do that and also do you see data as informing operations or do you see it more more of like an internal um leadership briefing tool thank you so i think when when we see uh and again it's work in progress the issue of data diagnostics and design i think we see it touching everything and that's one of the reasons why currently this is being convened underneath the executive secretariat which looks at both the operations and budget side and the policy side of the shop it's uh the highest ranking career position in the in the building um because you really need some of the same skill sets to answer the question on whether people are spending too much time on emails or on cables that you want to apply to the question of what you know are these programs working to actually get more boys and girls into primary education and into saying okay what you know what are what's our options set on syria um and so i think we would say kind of data informed not data driven in these spaces um and the knowledge management is its own thing right i mean you you know this far better than i uh that we're talking about a lot of different things but what we know is we need both some actual deeper expertise which is often either data science or design adam correct me if i'm wrong um and then you also want that combined with generalists who are looking at um and and and understand how to make it useful um you know the secretary said at the last chief of mission conference you know twitter is never going to replace a handshake and i think what we want is both of those worlds um you think it might but but you know assuming it doesn't i'm just kidding so if you go into that situation you want to say how is it going to be more effective once i do that handshake uh again to to be used in this direction so i think we're talking about lots of different data sets one of things that i would say generally this is me speaking um not necessarily the building as a whole is that we sometimes over emphasize um classified or or government held information and under value open source information um and i think that's a dynamic and a trend that's going to continue over time so things like crowdsourcing and open sourcing there you know what we're what i would say with this document is not that we're going to change everyone's mind but those people who tend to believe that are probably going to be more empowered by this document to think in the ways that we think will probably be trends going forward just building on that um out of the last Q2DR one of the things that we signaled with uh using science technology and innovation was standing up the geo center um which is part of the lab and that has been absolutely transformative as a matter of fact last weekend when we deployed our dart to napal it was the first time our geo center fed directly into the dart who was going off to napal napal with the latest data and i think that gets to your point about really linking data for operations so that people can be making the best decisions and as you saw in this Q2DR for us uh signaling the development information system which then gets down to project level data as well as country data you know you have health projects in in this part of the country you look at the health indicators at the municipal level getting back to your governance issue what's going on there if we're investing a lot of money and we're partnering these areas and yet the health indicators continue to to to deteriorate in that municipality are there issues of governance corruption and whatnot so that's the forward leaning on where we really want to go with the disk so top i think you can sum up the i've done you are ready to uh close this out i want to thank on behalf of uh yes i mean but thank you all very much for the questions for being here for helping to make us a rich conversation and talk about sure um so the sub theme or title that i wanted for this that i was told was too wonky so we weren't allowed to use it um was from west failure to a wiki world um and i think in many ways that that all a lot of what we're talking about is in this move from power being concentrated in hierarchies to networks as the secretary often says as we have the push at aid and a great push over recent years to do more local procurement and partnership as we look at how to leverage this partly because of budget constraints but also again that rise of the rest that was part of the american grand strategy all along how do we continue to operate um and make the most of this uh right now and i will end on a slightly dark note um and and say why i think this matters so much um the world is full of serious threats right now um we have this weird combination of best of times worst of times unprecedented growth of the global middle class so many people being pulled out of extreme poverty and yet we have these serious issues of endemic poverty of pandemic we have issues of radical inequality in certain areas and corruption we have threats like isis and what it means to be in those areas particularly to be a woman or child in those areas when american diplomacy and development is done well lives are saved we can actually prevent conflicts when we do this well and when we don't and when state and aid are not allowed to lead in the places they are supposed to be leading the world is not as safe as a place we all do this because we actually believe that diplomacy and development matter and if we believe that if we believe that we can reduce human suffering and increase human flourishing by advancing diplomacy and development we are talking about the tools to do that in a new century and in a very new world and we do this because we believe in it so this was a tremendous partnership with all of you throughout the buildings it was an act of faith in many ways between institutions and others but i just want to say like we live in a world of tremendous opportunity but also some pretty scary threats and i think the better we do this the better off the world is and that's the urgency with which i want people not just to read this report but to help us implement it and hold us accountable to doing so thank you join me in thanking these two