USAID funding not properly used in Pakistan: report

ISLAMABAD: Office of Inspector General (OIG) for USAID has found in its audit report that Washington reduced its committed amount from $75 million to $45 million for Strengthening Citizen Voice and Public Accountability Programme in Pakistan but it was not implemented properly for achieving the desired objective.

“We found USAID/Pakistan was not implementing the programme in a way that would encourage effective interaction between citizens and government or comply fully with USAID directives for programme design and implementation. The USAID mission did not ensure that the contract awarded to the Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (the Trust) matched the programme’s original design” the OIG stated in its prepared report.

According to the audit report prepared by OIG for USAID funded projects stated that the USAID mission shortened and reduced funding for the programme without adjusting its expected results.

In the programme design approval phase, the mission reduced the programme’s funding and length without making any other changes.  According to the activity approval document, the mission envisioned a $75 million, 5-year project to further civil society objectives in Pakistan. In the activity description, the mission anticipated up to 1,000 programme grants. 

After the mission director approved the programme in June 2010, USAID’s Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs (OAPA) reduced it by 40 percent to a $45 million, 3-year programme. Nonetheless, the mission awarded the contract with the same expected results and similar grant targets—between 800 and 1,000 grants to award, most of them under $100,000—as the original programme. 

The mission changed the funding and length of the programme based on OAPA’s interpretation of guidance from the State Department’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan that projects should be shorter. However, the mission made the changes without assessing their impact on the programme’s expected results. According to mission staff, this was an oversight. They told us they recognized the discrepancy during programme implementation but could not find a way to justify making programmatic changes more than a year into the programme.

Moreover, the USAID mission was not adequately monitoring the Trust’s performance in achieving programme goals or providing timely funding for all grant cycles. These deficiencies have limited the programme’s ability to make long-term improvements in governance and public accountability in Pakistan.

The Trust has awarded hundreds of grants to civil society organisations throughout Pakistan and had some success with short-term grant activities for component 1. However, two components—organisational development (component 2) and public accountability (component 3)—were unfulfilled because of a lack of mission monitoring and underperformance by the Trust.

Regarding organisational development, a significant amount of training provided by the Trust focused on showing organisations how to comply with USAID regulations, rather than how to be effective civil society groups. 

In addition, although public accountability was a significant part of the Trust’s proposal and the largest component of the award, efforts to develop public-private partnerships were largely limited to getting two universities to offer courses on nonprofit organisational management, and the courses had low enrollment. Throughout the programme’s implementation, the mission has not adequately monitored the Trust’s performance in achieving programme goals. For example, while security conditions in Pakistan make it difficult for USAID employees to visit activity sites, the USAID mission has not used the alternative mechanisms at its disposal, including the mission’s monitoring contractor.

While this programme is to end in May 2018, the OIG recommend that USAID/Pakistan take the following actions to help maximize the programme’s potential to achieve results including conduct an assessment of progress made on achieving the Strengthening Citizen Voice and Accountability Programme’s goals; determine if adjustments to programme activities, work plans, or the contract are necessary; and if so implement any actions that can be done before the programme ends. They also recommended implement a final review process by technical offices before awards are made to verify that they agree with the programme’s design, it concluded.