Talk:U.S. International Development Finance Corporation

Why not fix it first?

I first started this page following news of the agency's creation (I also worked on the tangentially related USAID and State Department wikis). I have not revisited the page in a while and I noticed that it has indeed taken on a promotional tone and flair. However, I think this can be rectified and that the page is still meaningful given the subject matter and likely growth thereof.--Zurkhardo (talk) 21:14, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

@Zurkhardo: I've declined the deletion request. I have no knowledge of this subject area, but it looks as if a large addition was made in late December last year by redlinked editors and IPs. Perhaps you could find a "clean" revision and revert to that? Espresso Addict (talk) 02:13, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Espresso Addict: Thank you! Sounds like a great idea, I'll get right on it.

Requesting edit to sidebar to reflect Administration change

Pursuant to the change in Administration on 1/20/2021 I'd like to propose edits to the sidebar to reflect that Adam S. Boehler is no longer DFC CEO and that the position is currently vacant. Please add a "Preceded by" line to include Mr. Boehler and list the current "Agency executive" as "Vacant"

Sdbenedict (talk) 20:46, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

@Sdbenedict:  Not done It has an acting executive, so that's good enough for now. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 21:27, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Budget and investment volume

I'd like to see details added about DFC's annual budget and investment volume, their changes over time, and preferably broken down by investment type (equity, loan, etc.), region, and program. Qzekrom (she/her • talk) 01:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Requesting edit to reflect new CEO

Hello editors -- DFC's new CEO has been sworn in and I'd like to request edits to components of the page to reflect the change. Mr. Dev Jagadesan is no longer acting CEO as of February 11, 2022. Mr. Scott A. Nathan has been sworn in as DFC's second CEO.

Could editors please update in the side panel as well as the leadership section?

Sdbenedict (talk) 20:34, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

 Done. Sdbenedict in the future, I recommend including a reference to a reliable source with edit requests, as that helps editors more quickly review the request. Best, Spencer^T•C 01:42, 13 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Spencer! Apologies for that and will do. Sdbenedict (talk) 12:45, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Suggesting significant edits to improve the page

Hello,

I have requested smaller COI edits in the past, but would like to try to help correct many of the errors on this page, correct/remove the promotional language that is flagged, as well as improve the general information about DFC.

To this end I’d like to suggest several bigger edits, listed below. For ease, I am breaking them up by section, but please let me know if there is a better way to move this forward. I’m looking forward to working with the editors to help improve the page!

Thanks in advance!

Intro

• [Line 2] Delete “and middle-” (DFC’s mandate is for “lower income countries.)
• [Line 3] To help clarify the organization’s purpose and mission, following “countries,” add: “with the aim of increasing and mobilizing additional private investment. The agency’s mission centers around advancing economic development in emerging economies, promoting U.S. economic interests and foreign policy, and prioritizing financially viable projects.”
• [Line 3] Add “by the BUILD Act” following the date “5 October 2018” to tie this back to the authorizing legislation
• [Line 6] Replace "equity" with “direct equity investments", replace "insurance" with '"political risk insurance", add "feasibility studies, and technical assistance" so that all of DFC’s authorities are included.
• [Line 7] Delete “As with the OPIC, DFC is predominately self-funding through the fees and interest collected during its regular operations” and replace with “The excess returns on DFC’s investments above total costs required to operate the agency are returned to the U.S. Treasury to reduce the deficit.”. This change will more accurately represent how DFC deals with its returns and the relationship with the U.S. Treasury as it is a different structure than it was under OPIC.
• To communicate the sectors where DFC invests, add new line at the end that reads: “DFC invests across several sectors, including energy, healthcare, critical infrastructure, and technology, and also focuses on empowering small businesses and women in emerging economies.”

History

• [Line 1] Add "following the implementation of the BUILD Act" after the date. Authorization by the BUILD Act contextualizes commencement of DFC’s operations.
• [Line 2] Delete the quote from former CEO Adam S. Boehler. This quote does not align with the “History” section explaining how DFC emerged from the BUILD Act and assumed the functions of OPIC. This sentence is also not grammatically correct and is not relevant to DFC’s history as an organization.
• DFC is a new agency but acknowledging its predecessor will further explain its mission. Add new sentence: “It builds upon the nearly 50-year history of its predecessor agency — the Overseas Private Investment Corporation — which sought to encourage private sector investment in parts of the world where it had the potential to do the most good.”

The BUILD Act

• [Line 4-6] Delete and replace with “The BUILD Act states that DFC’s mandate is to mobilize and facilitate the participation of private sector capital in the economic development of less developed countries, in order to complement the development assistance objectives, and advance the foreign policy interests, of the United States.” (This change would use language taken from the bill, providing a factual alternative to the current interpretations and commentary from analysts.)
• [Line 16-20] Delete from this section. Will recommend adding it in more relevant section below.

Investments

• [Line 1] Add sentences from "The BUILD Act Section" -- beginning with the sentence that starts with "DFC helps..." (Line 16) all the way through the sentence that ends with "...increase underwriting capacity" (Line 20). This suggested edit will push these lines of texts to a more relevant section.
• [Line 2] Move sentence that begins with "To ensure..." to end of Investments section to ensure flow of paragraph.

Initiatives

2X Women's Initiative

• [Line 2] Change "$1 billion catalyzed" to "$7 billion catalyzed"
• [Line 5] Add names of Group of Seven (G7) countries--Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States--for added clarity and to address the current tag asking for more information
• [Line 5-6] Replace clause that begins after the em dash with "a global gender finance initiative committed to mobilizing $15 billion by the end of 2022.

Connect Africa

• Delete entire "Connect Africa" section. This was an OPIC initiative and no longer appears on DFC's website as an active initiative.

Advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific

• Delete entire "Advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific" section. This is a region of investment for DFC, but is not an initiative.

Response to COVID-19

• This section does not provide a comprehensive overview of DFC's response to COVID-19. Therefore, suggest adding the following text: In 2020, DFC launched a number of initiatives aimed at confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 11, 2020, the agency launched the Health and Prosperity Initiative and issued a call for applications from private sector companies working on health-related projects in developing countries. The initiative was designed to provide up to $2 billion in financing for health projects, and while doing so target an additional $3 billion in private-sector investment.

2020 Kosovo–Serbia agreement

• Delete entire "2020 Kosovo–Serbia agreement" section. The Serbia office does not exist; political head was dismissed in early 2021. Furthermore, the peace highway rail link does not appear to be an active project according to DFC records of all active projects.

Leadership

• [Line 1-2] Delete. As leadership of this agency rotates frequently and is reflected in the sidebar, including the current information is duplicative. Instead, replace with the following sentences which speaks more to the actual leadership structure of the agency: "DFC is governed by a nine-member public-private Board of Directors including a Chief Executive Officer who oversees day-to-day operations of the agency. Other members of DFC’s Board of Directors include the Secretary of State, who is Chairperson, and the USAID Administrator, vice-Chair, along with the Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of Commerce; and four private sector Board members serving two-year terms. DFC’s Board of Directors, CEO, and Deputy CEO are appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. DFC also established a Development Advisory Council (DAC) to advise the Board of Directors on the extent to which the Corporation is meeting its development objectives under the BUILD Act. The nine members of the DAC offer development expertise from non-Governmental organizations, think tanks, advocacy organizations, foundations, and other organizations involved in international development.”

References

Sdbenedict (talk) 21:36, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Reply

Hi, I'm happy to help out with this over the next few days. If you have a moment, one thing that can help speed things along is filling citations out to more than just the bare URLs. There are automated and semi-automated tools for doing so (I just had a bot give a run at it, but because a lot of them are PDFs, it didn't do much), and at the top of the editing screen you should see a toolbar with "Advanced" "Special characters" "Help" and "Cite" tabs, the latter possibly being helpful for some cases (a lot of the above references can just be treated under the Web template). Filling out Template:cite report manually also may be useful (that's a template for inputting information from, in this case, a report like the Congressional Research Foundation files you listed; you can copy/paste the parameters and place them within <ref> ref tags</ref> and they'll populate as full references). See also: Template:cite web, Template:Cite press release, etc. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 02:24, 17 March 2022 (UTC)

Hey @WhinyTheYounger! Thank you so much for all that you've done so far. Just checking in to see if we can provide any other additional info on this to keep the process going? Thanks! Sdbenedict (talk) 15:18, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Hi! Sorry, I was a bit unclear. I'm a bit occupied at the moment (in an inpatient clinical trial as a volunteer, if you're curious!) and so am not quite in a place to rewrite the content like I did for the first few sections. You are more than welcome to propose additions replacing or supplementing content already on the page in light of the feedback we've gone through. The best way to do that would be to draft that in your sandbox, User:Sdbenedict/sandbox, and then pos an additional edit request for review, linking to your sandbox (feel free to ping me, I'm happy to review). WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 00:59, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Implementation

 Partly done: I have done some of these, not others, in the Intro; see below. I can continue to work through these edits in the coming week. The majority of the sources you cite are DFC itself, and while not disallowed, this presents a problem from the standpoint of Wikipedia editing and citation standards. Wherever there is a secondary source — the CRS reports being excellent here — that can provide the same information, we always prefer that over one directly tied to the subject. Insofar as it takes a significant amount of time for me to cross-check and look through CRS reports to verify what is being said by DRC, that slows the process down, and this can go much quicker if you're able to be specific about where you are citing information from beyond just a bare URL.

Also, note that there are not set page lines in Wikipedia; the width of the text expands with a user's browser window, so it's best practice to be more specific (e.g. the paragraph beginning with "such-and-such..."). Intro

•  Not done Per the Jan. 2022 CRS report (p. 13): "In general, DFC must prioritize low- and lower-middle-income economies, as defined by the World Bank."
•  Additional information needed Please note a specific page and/or quote in the underlying source that supports this statement.
•  Done
•  Partly done Used the CRS factsheet as the source, not the reference provided.
•  Additional information needed Please note a specific page and/or quote in the underlying source that supports this statement.
•  Partly done Used CRS report and reworded slightly to mirror underlying source.

I am happy to continue with this, though, again, it will be much faster if you can adjust your requests per some of the feedback above. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 23:34, 19 March 2022 (UTC)

Update, 21 March 2022 — as you may have noticed, I have further edited the article. There is a wealth of secondary coverage of the DFC, the BUILD Act, etc., which was relatively easy to find. Wikipedia as a general rule prefers such independent descriptions over content directly produced by the subjects in question; to that end, I made edits that have rendered your requests for the History and The BUILD Act sections obsolete, so they are  Not done. Please note that while you may prefer an interpretation of the DFC based on primary source documents, such as the text of the legislation, we do not prefer such sources over commentary by analysts, to use your words. For example, analysts (and reporters, and researchers) are uniform in their assessment that the primary impetus for the passage of The BUILD Act and the establishment of the DFC was to counter China, even though the word "China" does not appear in the legislative text. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 02:27, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful responses! This is really helpful and my apologies for making this more difficult than it needed to be. We are trying our best to get up to speed on Wikipedia's process and will keep this in mind in the future.

I saw where you've already made edits. Thanks so much and I'll take a look now to see if there are opportunists to improve the references on the remaining sections. Sdbenedict (talk) 15:15, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Of course, and I very much appreciate your efforts to familiarize yourself with our policies, guidelines, and various other sometimes-arcane norms. Of particular relevance here are Wikipedia:Verifiability, especially the sections on what is/is not a reliable source, and WP:PSTS, a subsection of Wikipedia:No original research, which talks about the relative weights of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. There's never a bright-line, and it's completely okay to use DFC materials to talk about the DFC, but once we start using what we call "WikiVoice" (the ideal tone of impartiality and neutrality that should be employed in any given Wikipedia article) to mirror statements about an entities more subjective corporate/organizational mission, objective, goals, etc., things get murky, because ultimately, a lot of those are still somewhat subjective. They can be included for the sake of completeness, but you'll notice I add attributions in-text, e.g. The DFC lists innovation, sustainable jobs, workers' protection, women's economic empowerment, and bolstering global supply chains as broader themes in its investment priorities. (cf. something like "The DFC's investment strategy supports innovation, sustainable jobs...").

Finally, I am not the god of this article or Wikipedia; I am (like you!) an editor. You are free to disagree with my edits and make suggestions according to your view of Wikipedia policy, and if there is sustained disagreement, we can call in an uninvolved editor for a third opinion, and proceed from there as well (which I don't think will be an issue). Let me know if there's something in this article or re: Wikipedia policy/guidelines generally that's confusing, happy to answer questions! WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 16:34, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

This all makes total sense. Thanks for clarifying. I've gone back to the sections you haven't gotten to yet (COVID-19, Serbia/Kosovo, and Leadership) and tried to adjust the references. Hopefully it is helpful and please don't hesitate to reach out if I can help provide more detail, clarify anything, or provide any other general support.

We really appreciate your thoughtfulness so far and don't anticipate any disagreements with your edits, but will keep that in mind just in case.

Thanks! Sdbenedict (talk) 17:37, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Hi - wanted to see how to remove the flag on top of this page.

Any suggestions are welcome! Trying to remove any previous copy that was deemed “too promotional.” GranolaType (talk) 21:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

After a reread/reassessment of the article, I've removed both the promotional and paid editing tags. The latter is addressed by earlier discussions on the talk page. The former is no longer relevant as the content has been substantially altered to remove overly promotional language. WhinyTheYounger ※ Talk 04:15, 25 December 2023 (UTC)