A Message from the USAID Administrator
Ambassador Randall L. Tobias
Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and Administrator U.S. Agency for International Development
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I am pleased to present the U.S. Agency for International
Development’s (USAID) Performance and Accountability
Report for Fiscal Year 2006 (PAR). This report comes
at a time of transition for the Agency. Following Secretary
Rice’s announcement in January of the most significant
restructuring of U.S. foreign assistance in decades, USAID
is working to streamline processes in order to meet the challenges
and opportunities of a new era in foreign assistance.
Recognizing the need for collaboration, the Department of
State and USAID have been operating under a joint Strategic
Plan for 2004-2009 that captures and articulates U.S foreign
policy objectives shared by both agencies. This report captures
our performance against the objectives laid out in that plan.
In the coming year, we will revise the Joint Strategic Plan
to reflect the foreign assistance reforms underway. Doing
so will provide the long-term strategic vision necessary to
ensure that foreign policy priorities and assistance programs
are fully aligned.
From the highest levels, this Administration has made and
Congress has supported an enormous commitment to development
and transformation. President Bush has made—and is keeping—that
commitment. In fact, the total official development assistance
(ODA) provided by the United States for 2005 came to $27.6
billion—a near tripling of ODA since 2001.
But these vastly increased resources have also come with
new responsibilities—to focus on performance, results,
accountability—and ultimately, to define success as
the ability of a nation to graduate from aid and become a
full partner in international peace and prosperity. This is
precisely what the Secretary has acknowledged in establishing
the transformational diplomacy goal of “helping to build
and sustain well-governed, democratic states that respond
to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly
in the international system.”
This is now the overarching goal of all U.S. foreign assistance.
From this point forward, all USAID and State Department foreign
assistance funds will be planned, allocated, and measured
against achieving this goal. Under the Secretary’s leadership,
the United States seeks to reform its organization, planning,
and implementation of foreign assistance in order to achieve
this goal.
A fundamental purpose of this reform is, in the end, to better
ensure that we are providing both the necessary tools and
the right incentives for host governments to secure the conditions
necessary for their citizens to achieve their full human potential.
We cannot provide those tools and incentives absent transparency
and accountability. The report that follows provides—for
the first time ever—a joint State-USAID performance
section. This is an important step upon which we will continue
to build in order to honor our long-standing commitment to
being effective and accountable stewards of taxpayer dollars.
Remarkably, the United States has never before had an integrated
foreign assistance strategy. We have not had a consistent
and comprehensive story to tell to our various stakeholders,
including Congress and the American public. This new strategic
approach will help us tell the story of what we are trying
to accomplish, and provide the basis for evaluating our progress—not
just within one agency, but across the U.S. government.
I believe USAID has a tremendous contribution to make in
writing that story. The men and women of USAID have the experience
and expertise that are crucial to meeting the unprecedented
development challenges of this century—a time which
sees the world at once ripe with democratic promise and menaced
by global terrorism.
As evidenced by our continued commitment to addressing challenges—from
the needs created by genocide in Sudan; to the toll taken
by diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria; to our work in rebuilding
both physical and human capacity following conflict in Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Lebanon—each of us who works at USAID is driven
by the belief that peaceful societies, where healthy and well-educated
people are free to provide for themselves and their families,
are aspirations of human beings regardless of ethnicity, religion,
or geographic location.
This core belief in human potential—and the understanding
that the United States can and should play a role in helping
people around the world strive for and achieve those aspirations—is
the cause that draws us together and drives us to perform.
As we move forward on foreign assistance reform, I am confident
that the Agency—and the entire U.S. government—will
be in a better position to report on that performance.
I hereby certify that the financial and performance data
in the FY 2006 PAR are reliable and complete, except for the
inadequacies detailed within this report. A discussion of
actions that USAID is taking to resolve these issues is also
provided in this report. This PAR contains the Agency’s
performance information as required by the Government Performance
and Results Act (GPRA); our audited consolidated financial
statements as required by the Chief Financial Officers (CFO)
Act and the Government Management Reform Act (GMRA); a report
on management decisions and actions in response to audit reports
issued by the Agency’s Inspector General (IG) as required
by the Inspector General Act; and a report on our management
and internal controls as required by the Federal Managers’
Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA).
Ambassador Randall L. Tobias
Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and Administrator
U.S. Agency for International Development
November 15, 2006
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