Annual Progress Report: Private Sector Engagement Support Operating Year 1

PSE Support is a rapid delivery vehicle of comprehensive support for Private Sector Engagement (PSE) to USAID Headquarters, Missions, Bureaus, and Independent Offices (MBIOs). By strengthening internal resources, capacities, and skills through all levels of USAID staffing, PSE Support builds USAID's capacity to work hand-in-hand with business, industry, and private enterprise to unlock private investment and achieve sustainable development outcomes at greater scale. During its initial operating year, PSE Support achieved significant progress and success. The project provided USAID with specialized technical support and advisory services on a range of PSE priorities, activities, and strategic objectives, including assistance in operationalizing the Agency's PSE Policy and enhancing the Journey to Self Reliance. PSE Support secured a broad spectrum of key achievements during FY2020 that have laid the groundwork for continued private sector engagement success for the project and USAID in the years ahead. PSE Support spearheaded efforts throughout FY2020 to identify, collect, triage, organize, and report out accurate data to track and monitor USAID's progress towards the Private Sector Engagement Agency Priority Goal (APG). The goal and related data include information about progress towards achieving enhanced staff capacity in PSE across the Agency via specialized training courses, USAID personnel attitudes and opinions of operating units' adherence to the PSE Policy, and the Agency's previous and active public-private partnerships. PSE Support developed and provided the PSE Hub with an initial proposed learning plan, outlining innovative training and capacity building approaches to maximize PSE learning among USAID staff. The learning proposal is aligned with and complemented by the development of the PSE Competencies Catalog, which provides the bedrock for PSE Support's training and learning activities aimed at transforming the capacity of USAID staff to leverage private sector actors and resources to achieve strategic development objectives across the Agency's portfolio. PSE Support also developed and delivered a specialized storytelling curriculum and framework for private sector engagement across USAID's portfolio, which can be leveraged by the Agency to more holistically articulate the role of PSE in programming, activities, and development outcomes. The curriculum provides an overview to USAID staff regarding the process for identifying and developing compelling PSE stories and case studies that model innovative approaches to private sector engagement in a variety of developing contexts. In addition, PSE Support provided comprehensive analysis of 2020 PSE Action Plans for all USAID MBIOs to the PSE Hub. PSE Support reviewed a total of 92 PSE Action Plans representing 101 USAID MBIOs, including 70 Mission plans, 5 Regional Bureau plans, and 17 Technical/Pillar Bureau plans. PSE Support provided detailed summaries of all PSE Action Plans, highlighting key sectors identified for proposed PSE interventions/programming, planned internal and external actions, and short topline descriptions of all plans. PSE Support's MEL specialists worked closely with the PSE Hub's Evidence & Learning Team to provide input and develop a new indicators table for Private Sector Engagement across USAID. This table identified and charted existing and prospective approaches used across the Agency to engage and involve the private sector in development projects and activities. Tracking the data from said engagement approaches better enables USAID to determine the effectiveness of varying PSE approaches, interventions, and models. PSE Support conducted consultations with a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the international development and customer relationship management spaces during FY2020. The findings from these consultations are informing USAID's development and procurement of an Agency-wide CRM system and a uniform approach to effective relationship management with the private sector. PSE Support engaged USAID's peers, including the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the development agencies for South Korea (KOICA), Japan (JICA), Sweden (Sida), Canada (SID), the United Kingdom (DFID), and Germany (GiZ) to identify diverse approaches to corporate relationship management. PSE Support's capacity building and subject matter experts collaborated with the counterparts in the Private Sector Engagement Hub to develop a comprehensive catalog of PSE competencies that will serve as the foundation of PSE trainings and curricula development moving forward. These competencies will enable USAID staff to acquire the requisite skills and know-how to effectively deploy PSE and achieve strategic development objectives across the Agency's portfolio.