USAID Fiscal Accountability and Sustainable Trade, First Annual Work Plan

The project's core staff includes Chief of Party (COP) Mark Gallagher and Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP) Welmar Rosado, with contributions from partners Nathan Associates, Georgia State University, and Abt Associates. The FAST project's core management activities include preparing concept and budget notes, high-level scopes of work, work plans, quick responses to USAID's requests, and general administrative support. Additionally, part of the core management work is to prepare initial responses to USAID to conduct specific activities, including costing out and preparing high-level approaches to conduct specific tasks. On-demand technical support is also provided by the FAST project, which can be called upon by USAID to respond to emerging issues. This support includes technical advisory assistance from FAST partners, such as Georgia State University, Nathan Associates, and Abt Associates. The FAST team provides quick turnaround, on-demand assistance to USAID for a variety of matters, including the review of methodology developed under the earlier fiscal task order (LPFM II) in the calculation of the "tax effort" indicator. The FAST project will provide the Contracting Officer Representative (COR) with three quarterly reports and one combined quarterly-annual report each project year, per the following schedule. The project will also be available for weekly phone reporting with the COR, but this will be limited to the COR's needs and to the amount of activities being implemented. The work carried out under this task order will be based on specific tasks that are within the scope of the task order and are approved by the COR. These tasks are included under either Component 1: Technical leadership, including strengthened understanding of leading practices and tools, or Component 2: USAID Operating Unit and Partner Country Support. The first workstream, Technical Leadership, includes activities to achieve technical leadership results, such as improved analysis and design of USAID-assisted PFM, trade, macroeconomic planning and policies, and other economic governance activities. The first two tasks under this workstream are to conduct a research project and to provide DRM training. These tasks are designed to enhance the ability of E3/EP and E3/TRR to monitor progress of USAID-assisted activities and promote leading practices and tools in PFM, trade, macroeconomic planning and policies, and other economic governance issues. The FAST project's timeframe is from October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020. The project's goal is to support rapid, sustainable, and equitable economic growth in USAID-assisted countries by enabling USAID to bring a systems approach to addressing PFM, TCB, macroeconomic planning and policies, and other economic governance issues.