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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.

Program Performance

Program performance management at USAID is a holistic process that incorporates strategic planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting. By applying best practices in each stage of the performance management process outlined below, USAID:

• Maximizes the impact of U.S. foreign assistance programs and manage for results;
• Improves knowledge, practices, transparency, and accountability;
• Stands up to scrutiny by foreign assistance managers, Congress, OMB, and taxpayers; and
• Fulfills the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 (pdf), which aims to improve the performance, management, and accountability of Federal Government programs.

USAID follows a four-part performance management process: 1) planning and setting goals; 2) collecting data and analyzing results; 3) using data for decision-making; and 4) communicating results.

To implement performance management effectively, USAID Missions and Offices adhere to the following key principles and practices that foster a performance-oriented culture:

• Planning for performance management early in the life of the program.
• Making decisions on the basis of performance data, research and evaluation.
• Seeking host country ownership and participation from customers, partners, stakeholders, and other USG entities during the performance management process.
• Strengthening host country or local organization capacity on monitoring and evaluation.
• Integrating gender considerations in the selection of performance indicators to ensure that both women and men have equal access to development activities and their benefits.
• Streamlining the process so that program managers only collect and report on the information that is most directly useful for performance management. Where possible, performance information needs are aligned with those of the host country counterparts, other donors, and implementing partners to lessen the overall data collection burden and help promote aid effectiveness.
• Clearly acknowledging any limitations in data quality so that achievements can be honestly assessed, and conveying clearly and accurately the problems that impede progress and steps that are being taken to address them.
• Proactively budgeting for performance management.

Strategic planning is the underpinning of every successful development program. A strategic plan outlines the intended changes to be achieved by a program, what approaches will used to achieve the change, and how success will be identified and demonstrated. USAID plans at a variety of levels, including the State-USAID Joint Strategic Plan, Country Development Cooperation Strategies, and sector level strategies. Links to all of USAID's publicly available strategies are below.

Country Level Strategies, by Region:

• Africa
• Asia
• Europe and Eurasia
• Latin America and the Caribbean
• Middle East

Sector Level Strategies:

• Democracy and Governance Strategies
  • USAID Democracy and Governance Strategic Framework (2005)
  • USAID Rule of Law Strategic Framework (2008)
  • USAID Fragile States Strategy (2005)
  • USAID Anticorruption Strategy (2005)
  • USAID Europe and Eurasia Bureau Strategy for Combating Corruption (2001)
• Education Strategies
  • Education Strategy: Opportunity Through Learning (2011)
• Health Strategies
  • Mitigating the Development Impacts of HIV/AIDS
• Economic Growth Strategies
  • Strategy for Economic Growth (2008)
• Humanitarian Assistance Strategies
  • Food for Peace Strategic Plan 2006-2010
• Urban Development Strategies
  • Making Cities Work: USAID's Urban Strategy (2001, 1998)

USAID Performance Trends

USAID and the Department of State annually report aggregated results from foreign assistance programs worldwide for a set of representative indicators in each of its five strategic goal areas: Achieving Peace and Security; Governing Justly and Democratically; Investing in People; Promoting Economic Growth and Prosperity; and Providing Humanitarian Assistance. USAID also monitors trends in performance over time for a subset of these indicators where results are demonstrably achieved by USAID (in concert with the Department of State and other Federal agencies). Performance data for FYs 2005-2009 are provided for USAID's representative indicators in the following USAID Performance Trends spreadsheet (MS Excel, 60kb). Detailed accounts of performance in individual fiscal years are available in the Annual Performance Report (or, prior to FY 2007, the Performance and Accountability Report).

TIPS

USAID's Performance Monitoring and Evaluation TIPS provide practical advice and suggestions to USAID managers and partners on issues related to performance monitoring and evaluation. These publications are supplemental references to the Automated Directive Service (ADS) Chapter 203 (pdf, 264kb). For complete list of TIPS, click here.

Program performance data is used to inform decisions at all levels of Agency programming. It is used to improve the performance, effectiveness, and design of development assistance activities, and to inform decisions whether to abandon or revise Agency or operating unit strategies, development objectives, programs, projects or activities that are not achieving intended results. The use of performance data in decision-making processes such as budget allocation, programming decisions, evaluation design, management contracts, and personnel appraisals raises the level of transparency and accountability and makes those processes more accessible to outside parties, including Congress and the American public. Examples of performance data used to inform decision-making include:

• Project Design
• Implementation Approaches
• Portfolio Reviews
• Evaluation
• FY 2011 Foreign Operations Congressional Budget Justification
• Country Development Cooperation Strategies

In addition to USAID's GPRA-mandated reports and other statutory reports to Congress, the Agency communicates its results to the public in a wide variety of media, including blogs, FrontLines, Telling Our Story, press releases, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

USAID and the Department of State also provide annual performance summaries on foreign assistance:

Performance Summaries by Pillar Bureau or Independent Office:

Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA)
Bureau for Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade (EGAT)
Bureau for Global Health (GH)
Office of Development Partners (ODP)

Performance Summaries by Region:

Africa
Asia
Europe and Eurasia
Latin America and the Caribbean
Middle East

Note: Several of the publications on this page are in Adobe PDF format, which requires Acrobat Reader software, available for free download from Adobe. PDF accessibility options are available at the Adobe accessibility page.

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