I 
112TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 3159 
To direct the President, in consultation with the Department of State, United 
States Agency for International Development, Millennium Challenge Cor-
poration, and the Department of Defense, to establish guidelines for 
United States foreign assistance programs, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
OCTOBER 12, 2011 
Mr. POE of Texas (for himself, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. SMITH of Washington, Mr. 
CRENSHAW, Mr. BURTON of Indiana, Mrs. ELLMERS, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. 
MORAN, Mr. CARNAHAN, Mr. SIRES, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. GRIFFIN of Ar-
kansas, Mr. CHABOT, Mr. BILIRAKIS, Mr. ACKERMAN, Mr. WESTMORE-
LAND, Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia, Mr. MCCAUL, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, 
Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. BONNER, Ms. ESHOO, Mr. CICILLINE, Mr. BLU-
MENAUER, Mr. COFFMAN of Colorado, Mr. WELCH, Mr. DEUTCH, Mr. 
MURPHY of Connecticut, Mrs. SCHMIDT, Mr. ELLISON, and Mr. KELLY) 
introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on 
Foreign Affairs 
A BILL 
To direct the President, in consultation with the Department 
of State, United States Agency for International Devel-
opment, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the De-
partment of Defense, to establish guidelines for United 
States foreign assistance programs, and for other pur-
poses. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
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SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Foreign Aid Trans-
parency and Accountability Act of 2012’’. 
SEC. 2. GUIDELINES FOR UNITED STATES FOREIGN ASSIST-
ANCE PROGRAMS. 
(a) PURPOSE.—The purpose of this section is to 
evaluate the performance of United States foreign assist-
ance programs and their contribution to policy, strategies, 
projects, program goals, and priorities undertaken by the 
Federal Government, to foster and promote innovative 
programs to improve the effectiveness of such programs, 
and to coordinate the monitoring and evaluation processes 
of Federal departments and agencies that administer such 
programs. 
(b) ESTABLISHMENT OF GUIDELINES.—The Presi-
dent, in consultation with the Department of State, 
United States Agency for International Development, Mil-
lennium Challenge Corporation, and the Department of 
Defense, shall establish guidelines regarding the establish-
ment of measurable goals, performance metrics, and moni-
toring and evaluation plans that can be applied on a uni-
form basis to United States foreign assistance programs, 
country assistance plans, and international and multilat-
eral assistance programs receiving financial assistance 
from the United States. Such guidelines shall be estab-
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lished according to best practices of monitoring and eval-
uation studies and analyses. 
(c) OBJECTIVES OF GUIDELINES.— 
(1) IN GENERAL.—Such guidelines shall provide 
direction to Federal departments and agencies that 
administer United States foreign assistance pro-
grams on how to develop the complete range of ac-
tivities relating to the monitoring of resources, the 
evaluation of projects, the evaluation of program im-
pacts, and analysis that is necessary for the identi-
fication of findings, generalizations that can be de-
rived from those findings, and their applicability to 
proposed project and program design. 
(2) OBJECTIVES.—Specifically, the guidelines 
shall provide direction on how to achieve the fol-
lowing objectives for monitoring and evaluation pro-
grams: 
(A) Building measurable goals, perform-
ance metrics and monitoring and evaluation 
into program design at the outset, including the 
provision of sufficient program resources to 
conduct monitoring and evaluation. 
(B) Disseminating guidelines for the devel-
opment and implementation of monitoring and 
evaluation programs to all personnel, especially 
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in the field, who are responsible for the design, 
implementation and management of foreign as-
sistance programs. 
(C) Developing a clearinghouse capacity 
for the dissemination of knowledge and lessons 
learned to United States development profes-
sionals, implementing partners, the inter-
national aid community, and aid recipient gov-
ernments, and as a repository of knowledge on 
lessons learned. 
(D) Distributing evaluation reports inter-
nally and making this material available online 
to the public. Furthermore, providing a sum-
mary including a description of methods, key 
findings and recommendations to the public on- 
line in a fully searchable form within 90 days 
after the completion of the evaluation. Prin-
cipled exceptions will be made in cases of classi-
fied or proprietary material. 
(E) Establishing annual monitoring and 
evaluation agendas and objectives that are re-
sponsive to policy and programmatic priorities. 
(F) Applying rigorous monitoring and eval-
uation methodologies, choosing from among a 
wide variety of qualitative and quantitative 
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(f) EVALUATION DEFINED.—In this section, the term 
‘‘evaluation’’ means, with respect to a United States for-
eign assistance program, the systematic collection and 
analysis of information about the characteristics and out-
comes of the program and projects under the program as 
a basis for judgments, to improve effectiveness, and to in-
form decisions about current and future programming. 
SEC. 3. INTERNET WEB SITE TO MAKE PUBLICLY AVAIL-
ABLE 
COMPREHENSIVE, 
TIMELY, 
COM-
PARABLE, AND ACCESSIBLE INFORMATION 
ON UNITED STATES FOREIGN ASSISTANCE 
PROGRAMS. 
(a) 
ESTABLISHMENT; 
PUBLICATION
AND
UP-
DATES.—Not later than 2 years after the date of the en-
actment of this Act, the President shall establish and 
maintain an Internet Web site to make publicly available 
comprehensive, timely, comparable, and accessible infor-
mation on United States foreign assistance programs. The 
head of each Federal department or agency that admin-
isters such programs shall on a regular basis publish and 
update on the Web site such information with respect to 
the programs of the department or agency. 
(b) MATTERS TO BE INCLUDED.— 
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(1) IN GENERAL.—Such information shall be 
published on a detailed program-by-program basis 
and country-by-country basis. 
(2) TYPES OF INFORMATION.—To ensure trans-
parency, accountability, and effectiveness of United 
States foreign assistance programs, the information 
shall include country assistance strategies, annual 
budget documents, congressional budget justifica-
tions, actual expenditures, and reports and evalua-
tions for such programs and projects under such 
programs. Each type of information described in this 
paragraph shall be published on the Web site not 
later than 30 days after the date of issuance of the 
information and shall be continuously updated. 
(3) REPORT IN LIEU OF INCLUSION.—If the 
head of a Federal department or agency makes a de-
termination that the inclusion of a required item of 
information on the Web site would jeopardize the 
health or security of an implementing partner or 
program beneficiary or would be detrimental to the 
national interests of the United States, such item of 
information may be submitted to Congress in a writ-
ten report in lieu of including it on the Web site, 
along with the reasons for not including it in the 
database required under subsection (c)(2). 
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(c) SCOPE OF INFORMATION.— 
(1) IN GENERAL.—The Web site shall contain 
such information relating to the current fiscal year 
and the immediately preceding 5 fiscal years. 
(2) DATABASE.— 
(A) IN
GENERAL.—Subject to subpara-
graph (B), the Web site shall also contain a 
link to a searchable database available to the 
public containing such information relating to 
fiscal years prior to the current fiscal year and 
the immediately preceding 5 fiscal years. 
(B) LIMITATION.—The database shall not 
contain such information relating to fiscal years 
prior to fiscal year 2006. 
(d) FORM.—Such information shall be published on 
the Web site in unclassified form. Any information deter-
mined to be classified information may be submitted to 
Congress in classified form and an unclassified summary 
of such information shall be published on the Web site. 
Æ 
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