MCC Works to Improve Sustainability at Headquarters

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Thomas Schehl, MCC Senior Sustainability Officer

MCC promotes environmental sustainability as a core principle of economic growth in its partner countries. At our headquarters in Washington, DC, we've embraced environmental sustainability in our policies and operations as a key component of responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

MCC is a relatively small government agency. We have fewer than 300 federal employees in Washington, DC, and our commitment to country ownership translates to a minimal presence in partner countries abroad. Nonetheless, we're committed to creating a sustainability-conscious operating environment for all of our employees and continuously improving policies and practices to enhance our environmental performance.

In October 2009, President Obama signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to develop, implement and annually update a formal Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan. Every agency's plan prioritizes actions based on a positive return on investment for the American taxpayer and meets energy, water, and waste reduction targets.

MCC developed its Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan in 2010 in response to President Obama's executive order. This year, in our Fiscal Year 2011 Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan [PDF], we assess what we've achieved as an agency and determine how we can build on those achievements for increased sustainability and cost-effectiveness.

This week, the Office of Management and Budget formally approved the FY 2011 Performance Plan.

This year’s plan highlights MCC’s new flexible work policy, expected to contribute to reduced greenhouse gas emissions; environmentally conscious procurement activities; electricity conservation efforts; a space consolidation analysis; new policies favoring bicycle commuters; money-saving paper reduction procedures; and an internal communications plan that builds on previous years’ substantial “greening” initiatives.

We're proud of our sustainability record, and will continue to assess and improve our policies in the coming year.

Learn more about Federal Agency Strategic Sustainability Performance Plans.

 

 

Selection Review Kicks Off

Posted on November 24, 2010 by James Parks, Acting Vice President, Department of Policy and Evaluation

With MCC’s FY11 country scorecards posted online earlier this week, I wanted to take this opportunity both to highlight MCC’s approach to country selection and to make a sincere call for feedback.

MCC is widely recognized for its focus on countries that exhibit good policy performance relative to their peers. As part of its process to select partner countries, MCC uses globally-recognized, public, quantitative indicators that help assess governments’ policy performance on Ruling Justly, Investing in People, and Economic Freedom.  MCC then compiles that indicator data on a scorecard for each candidate country.  This public, data-driven approach to selecting partner countries has worked well for MCC for the past six years.

As a learning organization, we feel it is appropriate to look rigorously at the selection system from time to time. Over the past six years, new hypotheses and research have emerged on the relationship between a range of development policies on the one hand and economic growth and poverty reduction on the other. There also have been important improvements to data, some of which already have been incorporated into our policy indicators. We want to ensure that MCC can make dynamic adjustments to its indicators, and, as follows, its scorecards, where appropriate to account for new research and improved data.

We are currently initiating a three part review to:

• examine what the current indicators are capturing;
• ask what else would be important to measure, based on links to poverty reduction and economic growth; and
• identify which indicators most effectively reflect relevant government policies and performance.

This review is an important opportunity to evaluate our indicators and scorecards, even if it may not result in significant changes.

We are asking you to share your suggestions and to encourage your professional colleagues to offer their assessments. We are particularly interested in comments that go beyond flagging a concern to recommending a solution. The link to our page for accepting public comment is: http://www.mcc.gov/pages/selection/selectionfy2011feedback/.

MCC will publish online comments received between now and January 10. This is an opportunity to make a recommendation early and have it published in advance of a good bit of public conversation and consultation in the months that follow. Thanks in advance for your time and critical thinking!