**GAO-13-815SP**                      Published: Sep 17, 2013. Publicly Released: Sep 17, 2013.                  

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## Highlights

This e-publication supplements our report, Global Food Security: USAID Is Improving Coordination but Needs to Require Systematic Assessments of Country-Level Risks (GAO-13-809). The purpose of this e-publication is to provide information from our web-based survey of U.S. representatives implementing Feed the Future (FTF) programs in 19 FTF focus countries. The survey asked their perceptions of the whole-of-government and country-led approaches in the planning and implementation of FTF. The topics included coordination within and between U.S. agencies, coordination with country stakeholders, the mechanism and frequency of coordination, the perceived effectiveness of coordination in accomplishing certain actions, and factors that may have helped or hindered coordination. The web-based survey was administered from May 2012 through August 2012. We surveyed all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and FTF partner-country representatives identified as key personnel by the agencies, including mission directors, Foreign Service Officers, Foreign Service Nationals, and personal services contractors implementing FTF in 19 countries. Overall, we achieved a weighted response rate of 72 percent, with 342 respondents to our survey.(1) We compared the respondents with nonrespondents on the basis of available demographic data, such as employment status, and did not find any significant differences between the groups. This e-publication presents the survey estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals based on all respondents as well as for USAID and FTF Partners.(2) The number of responses is presented for the Department of State (State), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Peace Corps, and other agencies combined.(3) See the report referenced above for a more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology, as well as a discussion of survey results.

## Supplemental Material

### Background

This e-publication supplements our report, Global Food Security: USAID Is Improving Coordination but Needs to Require Systematic Assessments of Country-Level Risks (GAO-13-809). The purpose of this e-publication is to provide information from our web-based survey of U.S. representatives implementing Feed the Future (FTF) programs in 19 FTF focus countries. The survey asked their perceptions of the whole-of-government and country-led approaches in the planning and implementation of FTF. The topics included coordination within and between U.S. agencies, coordination with country stakeholders, the mechanism and frequency of coordination, the perceived effectiveness of coordination in accomplishing certain actions, and factors that may have helped or hindered coordination. The web-based survey was administered from May 2012 through August 2012. We surveyed all U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and FTF partner-country representatives identified as key personnel by the agencies, including mission directors, Foreign Service Officers, Foreign Service Nationals, and personal services contractors implementing FTF in 19 countries. Overall, we achieved a weighted response rate of 72 percent, with 342 respondents to our survey.**(1)** We compared the respondents with nonrespondents on the basis of available demographic data, such as employment status, and did not find any significant differences between the groups. This e-publication presents the survey estimates and 95 percent confidence intervals based on all respondents as well as for USAID and FTF Partners.**(2)** The number of responses is presented for the Department of State (State), the Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Peace Corps, and other agencies combined.**(3)** See the report referenced above for a more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology, as well as a discussion of survey results.

A copy of the final web survey instrument is reproduced in this e-publication. Survey results are presented in the aggregate form. We do not report open-ended narrative responses. We conducted this performance audit from March 2013 to September 2013 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

**(1) We used Response Rate 3 (RR3) as defined by the American Association for Public Opinion Research in Standard Definitions: Final Dispositions of Case Codes and Outcome Rates for Surveys, 7th ed., 2011 to calculate the overall and agency specific response rates. Weighting accounts for the unequal agency sizes and response rates across agencies.**

**(2) The survey estimates for FTF Partners combine the responses for Department of State (State), Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Commerce (Commerce), Department of the Treasury (Treasury), Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), Peace Corps, and the United States African Development Foundation (USADF). There were a few survey respondents from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Department of Defense (DOD), Food for Peace, U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the U.S. Mission to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) which were surveyed and included in the FTF partner results, but are not FTF partners.**

**(3) The other agencies are CDC, Commerce, DOD, MCC, Treasury, and USADF, as well as a few representatives from Food for Peace, PEPFAR, and the U.S. Mission to ASEAN.**

**Click on the links below to view the questionnaire and results.**

All-agency resultsUSAIDFTF Partner AgenciesDepartment of StateDepartment of AgriculturePeace CorpsOther Partner Agencies

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### **All-agency results**

 

This section of the e-supplement presents the survey results for all U.S. representatives implementing Feed the Future (FTF) programs in 19 FTF focus countries. Although respondents were asked to provide written comments to open-ended questions, these responses are not provided here. The name of the FTF country in which the representative worked was prefilled into the questionnaire where indicated. We achieved an overall weighted response rate of 72 percent.

### Questionnaire Contents

 

(320981)

### Copyright

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## Topics

International Affairs

Global food securityAgricultural productionAgricultural programsDatabase management systemsDeveloping countriesFederal agenciesFuture budget projectionsInternational food programsInternational relationsMalnutritionPolitical representationPrivate sectorStrategic planning