{ "id": "R42827", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "number": "R42827", "active": true, "source": "EveryCRSReport.com, University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department", "versions": [ { "source": "EveryCRSReport.com", "id": 587719, "date": "2016-07-22", "retrieved": "2020-01-02T15:37:04.633599", "title": "Does Foreign Aid Work? Efforts to Evaluate U.S. Foreign Assistance", "summary": "In most cases, the success or failure of U.S. foreign aid programs is not entirely clear, in part because historically, most aid programs have not been evaluated for the purpose of determining their actual impact. Many programs are not even evaluated on basic performance. The purpose and methodologies of foreign aid evaluation have varied over the decades, responding to political and fiscal circumstances. Aid evaluation practices and policies have variously focused on meeting program management needs, building institutional learning, accounting for resources, informing policymakers, and building local oversight and project design capacity. Challenges to meaningful aid evaluation have varied as well, but several are recurring. Persistent challenges to effective evaluation include unclear aid objectives, funding and personnel constraints, emphasis on accountability for funds, methodological challenges, compressed timelines, country ownership and donor coordination commitments, security, and agency and personnel incentives. As a result of these challenges, aid agencies do not undertake evaluation of all foreign aid activities, and evaluations, when carried out, may differ considerably in quality.\nThe Obama Administration has taken several steps to enhance foreign assistance evaluation.\n 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) resulted in, among other things, a stated commitment to plan foreign aid budgets \u201cbased not on dollars spent, but on outcomes achieved.\u201d \nUSAID introduced a new evaluation policy in January 2011. \nThe State Department, which began to manage a growing portion of foreign assistance in the 21st century, introduced a new evaluation policy in February 2012, which was updated in January 2015. \nThe Millennium Challenge Corporation revised its evaluation policy in 2012, and soon after began releasing its first evaluation reports. \nThe agency evaluation policies differ in several respects, including their support for impact evaluation, but reflect a common emphasis on evaluation planning as a part of initial program design, transparency and accessibility of evaluation findings, and the application of data to inform future project design and policy decisions. Aspects of the three evaluation policies are compared in the Appendix.\nRecent reports and policy reviews suggest that aid evaluation frequency and quality have improved in recent years, though progress has been uneven. Attention to this issue remains strong, both within the Administration and among Members of Congress. The 2015 QDDR reemphasizes the role of evaluation, calling for more evaluation training, more strategic use of data, and more timely analysis of lessons learned, among other things. Though recent evaluation reform efforts have been agency-driven, Congress has considerable influence over their impact. Legislators may mandate a particular approach to evaluation directly through legislation (e.g., the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act, P.L. 114-191, enacted in July 2016), or may support or fail to support Administration policies by controlling the appropriations necessary to implement the policies. Furthermore, Congress will largely determine how, or if, any actionable information resulting from the new approach to evaluations will influence the nation\u2019s foreign assistance policy priorities.", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "active": true, "formats": [ { "format": "HTML", "encoding": "utf-8", "url": "https://www.crs.gov/Reports/R42827", "sha1": "851706a3c851237ad6ccf098145e778c8ee5f32f", "filename": "files/20160722_R42827_851706a3c851237ad6ccf098145e778c8ee5f32f.html", "images": {} }, { "format": "PDF", "encoding": null, "url": "https://www.crs.gov/Reports/pdf/R42827", "sha1": "b1d324b16349bccf49fe3317140a9b0099cbb40d", "filename": "files/20160722_R42827_b1d324b16349bccf49fe3317140a9b0099cbb40d.pdf", "images": {} } ], "topics": [ { "source": "IBCList", "id": 4757, "name": "Foreign Assistance" } ] }, { "source": "University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department", "sourceLink": "https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc855801/", "id": "R42827_2016Jun23", "date": "2016-06-23", "retrieved": "2016-08-07T13:31:21", "title": "Does Foreign Aid Work? Efforts to Evaluate U.S. Foreign Assistance", "summary": "This report discusses the need to evaluate U.S. bilateral assistance (not on the work of multilateral aid entities, such as the World Bank) and methods of evaluation. It provides an overview of the history of evaluation, challenges, and how findings may be applied to policy. Additionally, it discusses current evaluation policies and issues for Congress.", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORT", "active": false, "formats": [ { "format": "PDF", "filename": "files/20160623_R42827_931a725be982d139c3ed5f7d8abfdd3e6c16c2c5.pdf" }, { "format": "HTML", "filename": "files/20160623_R42827_931a725be982d139c3ed5f7d8abfdd3e6c16c2c5.html" } ], "topics": [ { "source": "LIV", "id": "Foreign aid", "name": "Foreign aid" }, { "source": "LIV", "id": "American economic assistance", "name": "American economic assistance" }, { "source": "LIV", "id": "Foreign economic relations", "name": "Foreign economic relations" } ] }, { "source": "EveryCRSReport.com", "id": 417407, "date": "2013-02-13", "retrieved": "2016-04-06T21:22:34.512155", "title": "Does Foreign Aid Work? Efforts to Evaluate U.S. Foreign Assistance", "summary": "In most cases, the success or failure of U.S. foreign aid programs is not entirely clear, in part because historically, most aid programs have not been evaluated for the purpose of determining their actual impact. The purpose and methodologies of foreign aid evaluation have varied over the decades, responding to political and fiscal circumstances. Aid evaluation practices and policies have variously focused on meeting program management needs, building institutional learning, accounting for resources, informing policymakers, and building local oversight and project design capacity. Challenges to meaningful aid evaluation have varied as well, but several are recurring. Persistent challenges to effective evaluation include unclear aid objectives, funding and personnel constraints, emphasis on accountability for funds, methodological challenges, compressed timelines, country ownership and donor coordination commitments, security, and agency and personnel incentives. As a result of these challenges, aid agencies do not undertake rigorous evaluation for all foreign aid activities.\nThe U.S. government agencies managing foreign assistance each have their own distinct evaluation policies; these policies have come into closer alignment in the last two years than in the past. The Obama Administration\u2019s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) resulted in, among other things, a stated commitment to plan foreign aid budgets \u201cbased not on dollars spent, but on outcomes achieved.\u201d This focus on evaluating the impact of foreign assistance reflects an international trend. USAID put this idea into practice by introducing a new evaluation policy in January 2011. The State Department, which began to manage a growing portion of foreign assistance over the past decade, followed suit with a similar policy in February 2012. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, notable for its demanding but little-tested approach to evaluation, also recently revised its policy. While differing in several respects, including their support for impact evaluation, the policies reflect a common emphasis on evaluation planning as a part of initial program design, transparency and accessibility of evaluation findings, and the application of data to inform future project design and allocation decisions. Aspects of the three evaluation policies are compared in Appendix A.\nThough recent evaluation reform efforts have been agency-driven, Congress has considerable influence over their impact. Legislators may mandate a particular approach to evaluation directly through legislation (e.g., H.R. 3159, S. 3310 in the 112th Congress), or can support or undermine Administration policies by controlling the appropriations necessary to implement the policies. Furthermore, Congress will largely determine how, or if, any actionable information resulting from the new approach to evaluations will influence the nation\u2019s foreign assistance policy priorities.", "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORTS", "active": true, "formats": [ { "format": "HTML", "encoding": "utf-8", "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/R42827", "sha1": "d4527ffbd3a08289dadcc551f518960e1603cfea", "filename": "files/20130213_R42827_d4527ffbd3a08289dadcc551f518960e1603cfea.html", "images": null }, { "format": "PDF", "encoding": null, "url": "http://www.crs.gov/Reports/pdf/R42827", "sha1": "e1cc9058c017b7718b97014fb8b965620ed363a8", "filename": "files/20130213_R42827_e1cc9058c017b7718b97014fb8b965620ed363a8.pdf", "images": null } ], "topics": [ { "source": "IBCList", "id": 3467, "name": "Foreign Aid" } ] }, { "source": "University of North Texas Libraries Government Documents Department", "sourceLink": "https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc819113/", "id": "R42827_2012Nov19", "date": "2012-11-19", "retrieved": "2016-03-19T13:57:26", "title": "Does Foreign Aid Work? Efforts to Evaluate U.S. Foreign Assistance", "summary": null, "type": "CRS Report", "typeId": "REPORT", "active": false, "formats": [ { "format": "PDF", "filename": "files/20121119_R42827_744a3a81873764e833b4d50bf090ad9727bed0c5.pdf" }, { "format": "HTML", "filename": "files/20121119_R42827_744a3a81873764e833b4d50bf090ad9727bed0c5.html" } ], "topics": [] } ], "topics": [ "Appropriations", "Foreign Affairs" ] }