USAID ACVFA Presentation: POLICY BRIEF: MONITORING & EVALUATION FOR RESULTS

Government's foreign assistance strategy is a critical component of its foreign policy, with the goal of expanding market economies and democratic politics while improving the lives of those in the developing world. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has traditionally led U.S. foreign assistance efforts, but the share administered by the Department of Defense (DOD) has grown significantly in recent years. Calls for reform of foreign assistance have come from various sources, including academia, think tanks, foundations, and current and former U.S. Government officials. A robust monitoring and evaluation system is critical to a more effective and efficient U.S. foreign assistance strategy. Current monitoring and evaluation of most U.S. foreign assistance is uneven across agencies, focuses on outputs rather than outcomes and impact, lacks sufficient rigor, and does not produce the necessary analysis to inform strategic decision making. Effective monitoring and evaluation can serve multiple stakeholders, including host country citizens and institutions, U.S. decision makers in the field and in Washington, and external evaluators. The role of monitoring is to determine the extent to which the expected outputs or outcomes of a program or activity are being achieved. When done well, monitoring can be invaluable to project implementers and managers to make mid-course corrections to maximize project impact. However, the role of monitoring in the U.S. Government's foreign assistance community has changed dramatically in the last 15 years, with a shift from USG staff to primarily monitoring contractors and grantees. This has resulted in the loss of dialogue, debate, and learning within agencies. The myriad of foreign assistance objectives requires a multiplicity of indicators, leading to onerous reporting requirements that try to cover all bases. There is an over-reliance on quantitative indicators and outputs of deliverables over which the project implementers have control, rather than qualitative indicators and outcomes, expected changes in attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors. Additionally, there is no standard guidance for monitoring foreign assistance programs, with requirements varying across agencies and offices. The evaluation policies and practices across U.S. Government agencies administering foreign assistance are also diverse. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has designed a robust impact evaluation system for its country compacts, but these evaluations have yet to be completed. The Education and Cultural Affairs Bureau at the State Department has well-respected evaluation efforts, but there is limited evaluation work in other bureaus and offices in the Department. USAID has a long and rich evaluation history but has neglected and lacked investment in these functions, as well as recent foreign assistance reform efforts. The decision to evaluate varies across U.S. agencies, with no policy or systematic guidance for what should be evaluated and why. More than three-quarters of survey respondents emphasized the need to make evaluation a requirement and routine part of the foreign assistance programming cycle. Evaluators rarely have the benefit of good baseline data for U.S. foreign assistance projects, which makes it difficult to conduct rigorous outcome and impact evaluations that can attribute changes to the project's investments. Insufficient funds are set aside for monitoring and evaluation, as partners are pressured to spend limited money on "non-programmatic" costs. Training on monitoring and evaluation is limited across U.S. Government agencies, with program planning, monitoring, and evaluation not included in standard training for State Department Foreign Service Officers or senior managers. Evaluations do not contribute to agency-wide or interagency knowledge, and if "learning" takes place, it is largely confined to the immediate operational unit that commissioned the evaluation rather than contributing to broader U.S. foreign assistance policy and practice.