Purposes of the Government Performance and Results Act - GPRA is intended to shift the focus of government decisionmaking, management, and accountability from activities and processes to the results and outcomes achieved by federal programs. New and valuable information on the plans, goals, and strategies of federal agencies has been provided since federal agencies began implementing GPRA. Under GPRA, annual performance plans are intended to clearly inform the Congress and the public of (1) the annual performance goals for agencies’ major programs and activities, (2) the measures that will be used to gauge performance, (3) the strategies and resources required to achieve the performance goals, and (4) the procedures that will be used to verify and validate performance information. These annual plans, issued soon after transmittal of the President’s budget, provide a direct linkage between an agency’s longer-term goals and mission and day-to-day activities. Annual performance reports are to subsequently report on the degree to which performance goals were met. The issuance of the agencies’ performance reports, due by March 31, represents a new and potentially more substantive phase in the implementation of GPRA —the opportunity to assess federal agencies’ actual performance for the prior fiscal year and to consider what steps are needed to improve performance and reduce costs in the future. USAID Mission, Operating Environment, and Strategic Plan - USAID, an independent federal government agency, is responsible for implementing U.S. foreign assistance programs. USAID’s Administrator receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State on implementing U.S. foreign assistance. USAID operates programs in about 125 countries, with resident staff in 75 countries in 4 regions of the world: sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Near East, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe and Eurasia. USAID promotes a wide range of assistance objectives related to economic and agricultural growth; population, health, and nutrition; the environment; democracy, governance, and the rule of law; education and training; and humanitarian assistance. USAID staff frequently work in difficult environments and under evolving demands, and programs often require years of effort to achieve desired outcomes. At USAID, decisions about programs and operating resources are based on the settings in which the agency pursues its goals. These settings can vary significantly across countries and regions, as well as over time. Therefore, USAID relies on local participation in planning and implementing programs since mission personnel are more familiar with the needs of a specific locale. According to USAID, the agency develops a new strategic plan and objectives for operating units to accomplish, or modifies existing ones, as appropriate. As part of this effort, operating units develop plans for performance monitoring that include baseline data and performance targets. Operating units annually report progress against performance targets and, based on the results, request resources for the following fiscal year. USAID headquarters uses these results both to allocate funding and to make “sector-wide assessments of the effectiveness of various objectives and approaches” for use in its annual performance report. In 1997, USAID defined a limited set of performance goals and indicators for each of the agency’s strategic goals. According to the agency, the goals, indicators, and targets are broad and at a country level. They share common attributes, such as “they are commonly available across countries; they are for the most part independently collected and available from published sources; and they permit performance reporting using a fairly compact set of tables that can be readily summarized and aggregated.” However, despite these attributes, USAID acknowledges that one cannot attribute overall country progress toward specific outcome areas solely to USAID programs. According to the USAID strategic plan, despite supporting and contributing to the achievement of performance goals, actual achievement is at best only weakly linked to USAID programs and resources. With this in mind, USAID revised its strategic plan in October 2000, and beginning this year, the agency will use the strategic objectives and indicators of operating units, which include country missions, regional offices, and bureaus, as the agency’s performance goals for its annual performance plan and annual performance report. USAID felt that at this level, it could more clearly demonstrate its contributions. Further, the agency changed the manner in which it will present performance plans and results by issuing two annual documents replacing previous years’ Annual Performance Plan and Annual Performance Report, starting with results reporting for fiscal year 2000 and planning for 2002. Both new documents will incorporate elements of past year results and future year plans, with a general description of both provided in a Performance Overview and more detailed performance data and targets provided in the annual Budget Justification to the Congress. This section discusses our analysis of USAID’s performance in achieving its selected key outcomes and the strategies the agency has in place.Although USAID reported it made progress toward achieving the selected outcomes, the extent of the progress is unclear because the agency based its support on disaggregated and, in some cases, out-of-date and selective data. Actual progress toward achieving outcomes, detailed in the FY 2000 Performance Overview, is not clear because USAID did not base its assessment of progress on fiscal year 2000 performance data. Instead, the agency relied on selective performance data the operating units submitted for fiscal year 1999. Data presented in the Fiscal Year 2002 Budget Justification to the Congress represent 2000 performance; however, USAID provided no discussion of the data’s validity and reliability. In addition, limiting performance data to the disaggregated level of the operating units’ strategic objectives makes determining progress toward achieving agency goals difficult. Finally, the agency provided a discussion of strategic human capital management issues and strategies related to its efforts for addressing natural and man-made disasters, but it did not discuss human capital issues and strategies in the context of its economic development and HIV/AIDS activities. The agency also did not discuss information technology issues and strategies in the context of accomplishing the three key outcomes. USAID reported it made progress toward achieving its outcome of increasing economic growth during 2000. However, the Performance Overview does not clearly articulate the agency’s actual progress and relies on 1999 performance results and mission self-assessments. Moreover, fiscal year 2000 data reported in the Budget Justification were not aggregated to summarize regional or agency level performance. To achieve this outcome USAID undertakes programs under three broad objectives: expanding and strengthening critical private markets, enhancing agricultural development and encouraging food security, and expanding and creating more equitable access to economic opportunity for the rural and urban poor. Seventy-five missions, regional offices, and bureaus (operating units) carry out 152 programs, also referred to as strategic objectives, under one or more of the three objectives. For example, more than two-thirds of the operating units supporting the economic growth outcome have programs with a focus on strengthening markets. The agency reported in the Performance Overview that overall it met or exceeded performance expectations for encouraging economic growth and agricultural development for 88 percent of the 152 strategic objectives. USAID based this determination on operating unit self-assessments but does not explain how these self-assessments were conducted. In addition, USAID did not assess agency progress against the performance goals contained in the Annual Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2000. For example, the agency did not report 2000 performance for the percentage of countries with annual growth of Gross Domestic Product per capita of at least 1 percent. Instead, the performance overview includes a discussion of economic growth trends in USAID recipient countries by region drawing on these broad country-level indicators. USAID’s fiscal year 2002 Budget Justification, which USAID completed after it submitted the Performance Overview, does contain fiscal year 2000 performance data. These data described the progress missions and other units made relative to agreed upon targets. However, the data are presented for individual operating units and are not aggregated to summarize regional or agencywide performance in either this document or the Performance Overview. USAID reported that 13 percent of the operating units’ economic growth and agricultural development strategic objectives did not meet expectations. For example, the overview states that several USAID programs under the strengthening markets objective failed to meet their goals. The Performance Overview listed operating units in the Europe and Eurasia region, including Albania, Armenia, Croatia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, as having difficulties. USAID further reported that programs in other regions, including Angola, Colombia, and Haiti, also fell short of expectations. USAID attributed these difficulties to external factors, especially to the lack of host government commitment to reforms and, in some cases, to political instability stemming from government transition. For example, USAID reported that in Croatia the agency suspended assistance under its financial program in 1998 because the government showed no willingness to engage in any meaningful economic reform. USAID’s explanation for not meeting some of its performance goals is consistent with its reporting of the prior year’s performance. USAID acknowledged that external factors, such as international financial conditions, might seriously affect desired program outcomes. Although, the Performance Overview provides examples of some programs that did not meet expectations in 1999, it does not provide details on all programs that did not meet expectations. Nor does it discuss strategies for addressing unmet goals in either 2000 or 2001. Although the Budget Justification contains detailed fiscal year 2000 performance information for individual operating units, explanations for why missions failed to meet performance targets for specific strategic objectives are not always provided. For example, one target of USAID’s program for reconstruction and expanded economic opportunity in Lebanon was “7,800 informal sector loans delivered.” The actual number of loans provided in 2000 was 5,880. The Budget Justification did not discuss the significance of, or provide a reason for, this shortfall. The Performance Overview does not assess the impact of its fiscal year 2000 performance on the likelihood of achieving its fiscal year 2001 goals for economic growth and agricultural development. The overview contains a general statement concluding that prospects for further progress are good, but it does not state what data this assertion is based on.