The USAID Center for Transformational Partnerships (CTP) is one of five centers within USAID’s newly announced Global Development Lab. With technical services assistance under contract from Dexis Consulting Group, CTP cultivates connections between public and private sector stakeholders to enable the extension, scaling, and sustainability of USAID’s global development initiatives and projects. The Center’s mission is cross-cutting in nature and works across the Agency to build partnership capacity.
Under its technical services contract with CTP and its precursor, the Global Development Alliance (GDA) within the Office of Innovation and Development (IDEA), Dexis provides programming, communications, training, and research support aimed at generating high-profile alliances between USAID and private sector and NGOs. Dexis is the primary designer andimplementer of the broad CTP internal and external messaging and communications strategy. Dexis supports include the creation and and upkeep of fact sheets, talking points, presentations, case studies, snapshots on key partnerships, webinars, press releases, and digital publications.
One of Dexis’ key contributions has been enabling stronger mechanism for the monitoring and evaluation of CTP activities such as the continued development and support of an existing Partnership Mapping Tool (PMT) enabling CTP and the public to efficiently identify live and completed public-private partnerships. The tool distills and filters over 1500 public-private partnerships involving more than 3500 unique organizations since 2001. The 12 years of data of USAID partnership activities' disparate information can be pulled into one searchable database and displayed with Google Earth technology that produces quick and easily understood graphics overlaid on geographical maps. Additionally, the analysis of the database contributes to finding patterns and best-practices of partnerships at USAID.
Creating knowledge management mechanism and crucially learning tools is another core component of Dexis’ services. Dexis has developed a presentation module called “Methods for Sharing Learning through Private Sector Engagement.” Although the presentation began with solely Global Partnerships, Dexis convened USAID's Development Credit Authority, Bureau for Food Security, Bureau for Global Health, Bureau for Education, Environment, and Economics and Private Sector Group Africa to design, train, and deliver the Agency-wide private sector engagement course at Missions around the world. The module was piloted at RDMA/Bangkok and El Salvador, and USAID is charged with further distribution among its 83 Missions worldwide.
Dexis also has identified the need for creating communities of practice. Internally, Dexis has supported the bi-annual Alliance Builders Forum to convene and build the capacity of USAID's private sector partnership builders around the world. Externally, Dexis created from inception Devex Impact – an online platform that brings private sector firms to a collaborative forum where they can explore new potentials for partnerships and share knowledge. Dexis has leveraged contacts with entities like Exxon Mobile to feature different sub-pages on the site where users can identify interested parties and activities. Dexis helped recruit seven members for Devex Impact’s Strategic Alliance Council, including Boeing, Exxon Mobile, KPMG, and IBM.
