Challenges for the Next Year SAID has made significant progress, particularly in the last year, in focusing on results. Substantial effort and resources have already been invested, but more is required. USAID must be able to report its results more comprehensively and conclusively, to have a better idea of why and under what circumstances certain approaches work best, to make performance information available more quickly and easily to all managers, and to do this without major new expenditures on management systems. Our agenda for moving along this path in 1995 includes: • Building on 4 years of experience with Mission strategic planning and the sustainable development strategies developed last year, we will prepare an Agency-wide results framework. It will include performance indicators to assess the results of our development work more uniformly and process indicators to track our internal progress in managing for results. • Choosing accurate, inexpensive, and easily used performance indicators, at both the operating unit and Agency level, is a complex, analytically difficult task. It will undoubtedly require various iterations as we learn from experience. We will give increased attention to identifying good indicators in 1995, especially for democracy and environment programs. • USAID will complete development and begin installation of a corporate information system. Among other things, it will include indicators and targets from all strategic plans and the most current information on progress toward these targets. When complete, the system will reduce formal reporting requirements, increase our ability to analyze and report on program performance, allow managers to make decisions better informed by the progress of their activities and lessons of experience, and permit broader, quicker dissemination of results. • With another year of measuring progress toward strategic and intermediate objectives, and clear guidance from headquarters on performance indicators that are best for measuring Agency-wide success, USAID will be better able to identify programs and approaches that are more, and less, successful in achieving their targets. This will let us concentrate on the most effective programs and learn from experience with them. This will require Missions and bureaus to devote greater analytical and technical resources to performance measurement and evaluation. Thank you for your letter of October 28, 1993, concerning FY 1994 foreign assistance appropriations and assistance to India. I share your concern regarding human rights issues in India, and I assure you that the Administration raises these issues regularly in high-level discussions with Indian Government officials. Given current budget constraints, cuts are being made to a number of USAID programs worldwide -- possibly including India. However, a reduction in USAID assistance to India would not, in my opinion, by itself achieve our shared goal of improving the human rights situation in India. India's economic reform program presents unprecedented opportunities for USAID to assist India in its efforts to become a prosperous, outward-looking country capable of meeting the basic human needs of its large population. Eighty-five percent of the USAID program in India is implemented through nongovernmental organizations. Through these organizations, we reach the poorest of the poor, often neglected castes and tribes, by providing food, nutrition education, basic health services, family planning services, and AIDS prevention and control services. These USAID programs are vital in a country where 230 million people are living below the abject poverty line; 3.84 million children die every year before reaching age 5; 50 percent of children under age 5 are malnourished; over 80 percent of pregnant/lactating mothers suffer from anemia: 48 percent of the adult population is illiterate; and 1 million persons are estimated to be infected with HIV/AIDS. If I can provide you with further information, please let me know. 320 TWENTY-FIRST STREET, NW, WASHINGTON, DC. 20523 ● PHONE: (202) 647-9620 • Fax: (202) 647-1770 Responses by Under Secretary Richard Moose 1. Is it true, as ACDA says, that the State Department opposed or opposes the NPT? Answer: of this Administration. Securing the permanent extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty has been a central component of the Clinton Administration's non-proliferation policy since the beginning Secretary Christopher has identified non-proliferation as one of State's critical priorities. As he noted in testimony before Congress earlier this year, the centerpiece of our non-proliferation strategy was to obtain the indefinite and unconditional extension of the NPT. State, along with all other Executive Branch agencies, worked laboriously to extend and strengthen the NPT. Obtaining the Treaty's extension required the support of many agencies, but its success could not have occurred without the intense involvement and support of the State Department, particularly by our diplomats in capitals who were instrumental in securing high-level political support for the Treaty's extension worldwide. UNCLASSIFIED Did State fail to plan for the 1995 NPT Extension and Review Conference, as ACDA told GAO? 2. Answer: The Department of State identified the extension of the NPT early in this Administration as one of the critical components of our overall non-proliferation and arms control policies. State actively participated in every NPT Review Conference since 1975, started last year in planning for the NPT Review and Extension Conference, worked with ACDA and others in the interagency to develop a strategy for securing the Treaty's extension, and through the INR bureau, initiated the first interagency assessment of the Treaty's extension prospects. State leadership was critical over the past year in designing, implementing and convincing our allies to pursue a strategy of "50 percent plus 1" on the extension decision, an approach instrumental in securing the Treaty's extension. From the Secretary to every regional and relevant functional bureau, State policymakers and diplomats worldwide worked assiduously and tirelessly to secure the Treaty's extension. State negotiators worked especially hard in the final week of the Conference in New York, Washington and capitals to lobby key countries that threatened to disrupt the emerging consensus for extension. UNCLASSIFIED |