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USAID currently has nearly 8,000 employees worldwide, which is half the number the agency had at its peak in the 1970s.
The FY 2011 foreign assistance (USAID and State) budget request is just 1.4% of the budget for the entire Federal government.
A USAID-funded scientist, Gebisa Ejeta, won the 2009 World Food Prize for developing drought and striga resistant sorghum.
In 2009 PEPFAR directly supported prevention of mother-to-child transmission programs that allowed nearly 100,000 babies of HIV-positive mothers to be born HIV-free.
The first woman to win the Nobel Prize for economics, Elinor Ostrom, credits USAID with launching her career in development research.
In 2010, a USAID-supported study provided the first-ever proof that the use of an antiretroviral-based microbicide gel (1% Tenofovir) can significantly reduce the risk of HIV infection in women.
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Agency Performance
USAID finds itself at a unique moment of opportunity. A powerful consensus has formed at the highest levels of the US government that development is vital to the shared interests of an interconnected world. The scale and complexity of the challenges we face are daunting-a billion people live in hunger and the threats posed by climate change are growing-but the tools, resources and capacity to solve these big problems have never been greater. Our success lies in the hands of the talented, dedicated men and women who serve at USAID. Their stories of success, failure, and mid-course corrections to help the world's poor are the focus of IMPACTblog. Additional stories and pictorials of significant milestones and game-changing solutions can be found at USAID's 50th Anniversary website.
USAID monitors, evaluates, and reports on its performance in different ways to meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders, including the Congress and the American public.
Agency Performance Reports
The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993 was implemented with the purpose of improving the performance, management, and accountability of Federal Government programs. It has since been improved and updated by the GPRA Modernization Act of 2010 (pdf, 202kb) to take advantage of the latest technologies and to apply lessons learned from nearly two decades of implementation. USAID complies with GPRMA and with annually updated guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by producing a series of mandated reports, including an Agency Strategic Plan (known as the joint USAID/Department of State Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review and its addendum (pdf, 2.54Mb) and its addendum (pdf, 316kb), Agency Financial Report (AFR), Annual Performance Report (APR), and a Summary of Performance and Financial Information. In addition to these reports, the Foreign Assistance Dashboard is a useful tool that provides additional information on U.S. Government foreign assistance funds and enables users to examine, research, and track aid investments in a standard and easy-to-understand format.
USAID Reports to Congress on Performance Measurement may be viewed here and additional USAID reports to Congress may be viewed here.
Agency Priority Goals (USAID and Department of State) FY 2012-2013
In order to further develop the Obama Administration's performance agenda, the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 made Agency Priority Goals (APGs) a statutory requirement and mandated that agencies develop or revise these goals every two years, starting with the FY 2013 budget submission. These goals should:
- Represent near-term (24-month) outcomes;
- Reflect the top performance improvement priorities of agency leadership;
- Include clear completion dates, targets, and associated indicators which can be measured or marked by milestones to gauge process;
- Be measurable on a quarterly basis.
For more information on the joint USAID/Department of State FY 2012-2013 Agency Priority goals click here.
Joint USAID-Department of State High Priority Performance Goals (HPPGs) FY 2009-2011
High Priority Performance Goals preceded the Agency Priority Goals and were completed in FY 2011.
For the summary of progress closeout reports of the High Priority Performance Goals click here.
Monitoring
Monitoring is a critical piece of USAID's performance management process. During the planning process, USAID Missions and Offices are responsible for establishing Performance Management Plans. These include indicators and ambitious, optimistic, and achievable performance targets to measure progress toward achieving intended objectives. To ensure high quality data, operating units are required to conduct data quality assessments for all performance data reported to Washington. Implementing partners are also required to provide periodic progress reports to the Agency throughout the life of their contract or agreement.
Each Mission/Office conducts at least one Portfolio Review each year, during which strategic and operational issues are analyzed to determine whether USAID-supported activities are leading to the results outlined in approved plans. Based on the data presented, Missions/Offices may alter, increase, or discontinue activities and rethink the logic behind the original expectations.
Evaluations
USAID seeks to be a premier development organization that continually learns from its experience. Key to organizational learning is the timely use of empirical evidence derived from quality evaluations and research studies to improve the design and implementation of our development programs. The best time to plan for evaluations is during the planning and design phases of a program. During the design phase, objectives (results) and indicators are identified to measure performance of the program over time. To demonstrate a counterfactual (what would happen if the program were not implemented) it is critical to build into the design of the program a plan for baseline and endline data collection and a structure that would allow the creation of appropriate comparison groups. It is important to note that while performance monitoring can determine whether or not results are being achieved, evaluations are critical for determining the factors that helped or hindered the project from achieving its objectives, and why.
One of the goals of USAID FORWARD is to Strengthen Monitoring, Evaluation and Transparency. USAID issued a new evaluation policy on January 9, 2011, prioritizing program evaluation. USAID is also committing resources to help build capacity within USAID to design, implement, and manage quality evaluations and to improve performance monitoring. New guidance on Country Development Strategic Planning (pdf, 301kb) and Project Design (pdf, 369kb) also encourages the increased generation and use of quality data and knowledge for decision making.
USAID's current practices on monitoring and evaluation are detailed in the Automated Directives System, Chapter 203: Assessing and Learning (pdf).
 | Inspector General (IG) Audits The Agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) is an independent entity whose mission is to combat waste, fraud and abuse in USAID's programs and operations. The OIG's annual audit plan and published audit reports can be accessed here. Each year, OIG also provides USAID management with an update on the most serious management problems facing the Agency. These are included in the Agency's Annual Financial Report. |
|  | Government Accountability Office (GAO) Audits GAO audits and evaluations identify federal programs and operations that are high risk due to their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. You may locate other GAO reports on USAID programs by accessing the link on the left and selecting the box next to the Agency's name. |
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