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Our Current System and Our Plans for the Future

USAID must set targets and measure results at various levels, including Agency, bureau, and country/mission, and in varying country contexts ranging from failed states to those that are near graduation. The Joint State-USAID Strategic Plan presents the overarching construct for managing and measuring all Agency performance. However, the foundation and critical input for any USAID performance system is the country mission and operating level, and the Agency has not always been totally successful in realistically setting targets and then gathering operating level results in a form compatible with Agency reporting needs.

To correct this, USAID introduced a set of far-reaching strategic management reforms intended to more closely link foreign aid programs with the goals and objectives of the Joint State-USAID Strategic Plan, to improve the effectiveness of the assistance that USAID manages, to be more precise and realistic in establishing foreign aid rationale and expected outcomes in particular situations, and overall to improve the measurement and reporting of results at all organizational levels. The reforms:

• Introduced two new planning instruments: First, an Agency Policy Framework which will aggregate the major policies and strategies affecting Agency operations, including the Joint State-USAID Strategic Plan, the five new Operational Goals, and the host of targeted sector and issues-driven guidance. Second, Bureau Strategic Frameworks, which building on the Agency Policy Framework, established bureau program priorities and major objectives and targets for the bureau and the countries. Both levels will provide an improved and transparent structure for planning and reporting on performance at the country mission, bureau, and the Agency levels.
  
• Further tackled the perennial problem of gathering performance information at the operating level, aggregating it, and reporting for Agency. This has been particularly challenging given the reality of a very diverse program mix in countries of widely varying need, capability, commitment, and foreign policy priority. USAID introduced 40 standard Agency Program Components with common indicators that link its field programs directly to Agency performance goals and objectives in the Joint State-USAID Strategic Plan. The components represent virtually everything USAID does, from "Increased Agricultural Productivity" to "Reducing the Impact of HIV/AIDS" to "Addressing Conflict Transitional Issues." These components can be visualized as a "bridge" between Mission or operating level performance and Agency performance.

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