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Between Federal Agencies »

Develop Coherent Technical Assistance Strategies for States and Communities

Why Is This Idea Important?: Technical assistance consultants often play important go-between roles, providing support to communities based on guidance from the federal agency who hired them and providing information to federal agencies on their grantees. They often serve as de facto program managers because they have more contact with the grantee than the federal agency staff. In this role, they often use a heavy hand to guide the strategies and actions of the grantee. When there are multiple sets of technical assistance providers, there is often conflicting advice making it difficult to develop and implement coherent strategies on the ground.

In the 1990s, the federal government, in a very rough estimate, was found to spend almost $100 million per year to hire technical assistance consultants to assist communities with the implementation of federal programs. These technical assistance consultants are often engaged to help communities develop and implement public-private collaboration frameworks and public participation strategies as well as other, more technical skills (e.g., financial management). Since many federal programs target the same low income communities, each federal program sends its own technical assistance consultants, who, at best, are not coordinated, and, at worst, provide contradictory advice.

Federal agencies with federal to community (e.g., cities, counties, neighborhoods, etc.) funding programs should be required to develop a census of which programs funds which community and then develop coherent technical assistance plans that cut across funding streams.

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Submitted by bill 2 years ago

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