Foreign Aid Monitoring and Evaluation: Selected Agencies' Monitoring and Evaluation Policies Generally Address Leading Practices

government plans to spend approximately $35 billion on foreign assistance in 2017 to improve the lives and health of millions living in poverty, support democracy, enhance global security, and achieve other U.S. foreign policy goals. Managing these funds effectively requires reliable monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems. Monitoring is defined as the continuous oversight by the U.S. government of programs and projects to assess their performance and progress toward achieving objectives and results. Evaluations are systematic studies conducted periodically or on an ad hoc basis to assess how well a program is working and to learn the benefits of a program or how to improve it. The Office of Management and Budget has set expectations for agencies to conduct program evaluations as essential tools for improving program design and operations, determining whether intended outcomes are achieved effectively, and informing decision making. The Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act of 2016 (FATAA) highlights the Congress's support for these M&E activities and their importance to U.S. foreign assistance. FATAA requires the President to establish M&E policy guidelines that follow best practices of monitoring studies and analysis and that can be applied with reasonable consistency to the foreign assistance programs specified in the act. The U.S. government conducted a review of foreign assistance M&E policies in six agencies: the Departments of Agriculture (USDA), Defense (DOD), Health and Human Services (HHS), and State; the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). The review aimed to determine the extent to which these agencies have developed M&E policies and to what extent existing M&E policies are consistent with leading practices. The review identified 28 leading practices for monitoring and evaluation, which were assessed against the policies of the six agencies. All the agencies reviewed, except DOD, have established M&E policies that apply to their major foreign assistance programs. State, USAID, and MCC have agency-wide policies for foreign assistance M&E, while the civilian non-foreign-affairs agencies have policies relevant to their major foreign assistance programs. DOD has not issued M&E policies for its humanitarian and security assistance programs, but is in the process of doing so. The existing foreign assistance M&E policies reviewed generally address the leading M&E practices identified, including the development, collection, analysis, and reporting of data on performance indicators, and the documentation of an evaluation plan or agenda. The policies of the agencies reviewed generally address the leading M&E practices, with two of the five agencies with existing policies, State and HHS, addressing all 28 practices. The policies of the agencies do not necessarily ensure that program staff responsible for M&E will follow them, and none of the agencies made adherence to all 28 M&E practices mandatory. For 10 of the practices, at least one of the agencies made adherence voluntary. The review did not make any recommendations in this report.