The Foreign Service Journal, April 2005

government regulations.) Yet MCC prides itself on having a small staff. Presumably to address this issue, the MCC legislation proposes to engage institutional contractors to provide monitoring and evaluation services. Outsourcing such an impor- tant function presents another chal- lenge in the context of program accountability. The for-profit contrac- tors or nonprofit, nongovernmental organizations likely to receive such contracts are the same organizations that might very well be bidding on, designing or implementing the MCC compact’s various activities. For that reason, these organizations have little incentive to be the bearers of bad news. If they report too critically on an activity’s progress, they might pre- clude themselves from being compet- itive in the bid for a follow-on activity. Here again, the activity design and implementation selection process will be managed by the same “client,” the MCC program officer and/or her col- leagues. As any USAID contractor or grantee will tell you, it does not pay to bite the hand that feeds you. USAID, which has had consider- able experience in dealing with such conflicts of interest, has many rules and regulations to reduce the frequen- cy of this phenomenon. However, it is these very rules and regulations that motivated the Bush administration to exclude USAID from serving as the MCA’s executing agency, and instead create yet another government entity, the MCC, one that could effectively work without these kinds of bureau- cratic hindrances and constraints. In short, the Bush administration has ignored and avoided reconciling the major trade-off between accountability and flexibility. Indicators and Other Pitfalls In addition, there are several methodological problems with the performance indicators used to judge each country’s eligibility and progress. A P R I L 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41