Audit of USAID Iraq’s Local Governance Program II Activities
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OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL AUDIT OF USAID/IRAQ’S LOCAL GOVERNANCE PROGRAM II ACTIVITIES AUDIT REPORT NO. E-267-09-003-P May 31, 2009 BAGHDAD, IRAQ Office of Inspector General May 31, 2009 MEMORANDUM TO: Acting USAID/Iraq Mission Director, Thomas R. Delaney FROM: Director, Office of Inspector General/Iraq, Gerard M. Custer /s/ SUBJECT: Audit of USAID/Iraq’s Local Governance Program II Activities (Audit Report No. E-267-09-003-P) This memorandum transmits our final report on the subject audit. In finalizing the report, we considered your comments on the draft report and modified the report language as appropriate. Your comments are included in their entirety as appendix II. The report contains five recommendations for corrective action. On the basis of your written comments, in which you described actions planned or already taken to address our concerns, we consider that final action has been taken on recommendations 1 and 3 and that management decisions have been reached on recommendations 2, 4, and 5. A determination of final action will be made by the Audit Performance and Compliance Division upon completion of the planned corrective actions for recommendations 2, 4, and 5. I want to express my sincere appreciation for the cooperation and courtesies extended to my staff during this audit. U.S. Agency for International Development USAID/Iraq/OIG ...
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| Publié par | Rozis |
| Nombre de lectures | 47 |
| Langue | English |
Extrait
OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL
AUDIT OF USAID/IRAQ’S LOCAL GOVERNANCE PROGRAM II ACTIVITIES
AUDIT REPORT NO. E-267-09-003-P May 31, 2009
BAGHDAD, IRAQ
Office of Inspector General
May 31, 2009 MEMORANDUM TO:Acting USAID/Iraq Mission Director, Thomas R. Delaney FROM:Director, Office of Inspector General/Iraq, Gerard M. Custer /s/ SUBJECT:Audit of USAID/Iraq’s Local Governance Program II Activities (Audit Report No. E-267-09-003-P)
This memorandum transmits our final report on the subject audit. In finalizing the report, we considered your comments on the draft report and modified the report language as appropriate. Your comments are included in their entirety as appendix II. The report contains five recommendations for corrective action. On the basis of your written comments, in which you described actions planned or already taken to address our concerns, we consider that final action has been taken on recommendations 1 and 3 and that management decisions have been reached on recommendations 2, 4, and 5. A determination of final action will be made by the Audit Performance and Compliance Division upon completion of the planned corrective actions for recommendations 2, 4, and 5. I want to express my sincere appreciation for the cooperation and courtesies extended to my staff during this audit.
U.S. Agency for International Development USAID/Iraq/OIG APO, AE 09316 www.usaid.gov/oig
CONTENTS Summary of Results....................................................................................................... 1 Background..................................................................................................................... 3 Audit Objective .................................................................................................................. 4 Audit Findings................................................................................................................. 5 Training Courses Need Increased Oversight by USAID/Iraq ................................................................................................................... 7 USAID/Iraq Needs to Implement Controls to Minimize Repetitive Training ............................................................................................. 9 USAID/Iraq Needs to Develop Criteria for Selecting Trainees .......................................................................................................... 11 Contractor Performance Review Process Needs Better Methodology.............................................................................................. 13 Contractor Performance Reviews Need Timely Preparation .................................................................................................... 13 Contractor Performance Reviews Should Accurately Reflect Contractor Performance.............................................................................................................. 14 Evaluation of Management Comments....................................................................... 16 Appendix IScope and Methodology......................................................................... 18 Appendix IIManagement Comments........................................................................ 20 Appendix IIIReported Performance Results........................................................... 24
SUMMARY OF RESULTS Iraq does not have a history of local self-governance like that of the United States or other Western democracies. Under the authoritarian, centralized rule of the Ba'ath Party, local communities were unable to develop an administrative capacity to deliver services to their citizens, prepare or execute budgets, or effectively manage the challenges confronting them (page 3). To address the lack of experience in local and decentralized self-governance, USAID/Iraq developed the Local Governance ProgramPhase II, commonly referred to as LGPII. Started in May 2005, this $370 million program was designed to consolidate gains made during the first Local Governance Program, which ran from 2003 to 2005, and to continue working with Iraqis to establish and strengthen the conditions, institutions, capacity, and legal and policy framework for a democratic local governance system. It was partially successful in doing so (pages 3 and 5). In particular, LGPII achieved some success with the technical assistance and training that it had provided to Iraq’s provincial councils. For example, 16 of 18 provincial councils had met criteria for functioning. In addition, each provincial council had finalized provincial development strategies for use as their provinces’ public investment plans, and 16 of 18 councils had invested in projects listed in their respective provincial development strategies. Further, in the first 9 months of the year 2008, the provincial governments had contracted 60 percent of $3.34 billion in capital budget funds that had been assigned to them by the national Iraqi Government (page 5). LGPII also aimed to strengthen local governance by building the capacity of local council members and Iraqi governmental officials. However, USAID/Iraq did not establish criteria for selecting recipients of training and, moreover, approved a demand-driven and decentralized approach that essentially allowed Iraqi officials to enroll in whatever training courses they felt would benefit them. Consequently, approximately 27,000 Iraqis received training, but the success or short-term impact of that significant amount of training on improving local governance was not measured. In addition, controls to prevent officials from taking courses more than once had not been established. As a result, officials misused the training program by taking some courses multiple times (pages 5, 9, and 10). Besides providing training and technical assistance to provincial and local Iraqi officials, LGPII also aimed to use Geographic Information System software to produce city maps with utility overlays to help plan for the delivery of essential services. However, progress in training Iraqi officials to use the software and develop the maps was slow. As of September 30, 2008, only two provinces had completed city property boundary maps, but neither of those maps included overlays showing utilities such as electricity, sewage, and water networks (page 6). LGPII’s project activities largely ended on December 31, 2008. This report contains five recommendations that should be addressed during LGPII’s follow-on project, the Local Governance ProgramPhase III (LGPIII). OIG recommends that USAID/Iraq: • Increase its oversight of training courses by approving curriculums of courses
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offered to Iraqi Government officials. •Implement controls to ensure that repetitive trainings are minimized. •Develop criteria for identifying and selecting participant trainees. •Prepare contractor performance reviews promptly. •Establish policies and procedures to ensure that the reviews portray the actual performance of its contractors (pages 915).
In response to our draft report, USAID/Iraq concurred with each of the five recommendations. On the basis of the mission’s response, final actions have been taken on recommendations 1 and 3, and management decisions have been reached on recommendations 2, 4, and 5 (see page 16). The mission’s written comments on the draft report are included in their entirety as appendix II to this report (see page 20).
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BACKGROUND Iraq does not have a history of local self-governance like that of the United States or other Western democracies. Under the authoritarian, centralized rule of the Ba’ath Party, local communities were unable to develop an administrative capacity to deliver services to their citizens, prepare or execute budgets, or effectively manage the challenges confronting them. As a result, local government officials and civil servants never learned how to assess local needs effectively, develop priorities among competing needs, or translate these priorities into realistic budgets and service delivery plans. Moreover, other than the appointed officials, citizens never participated in or interfaced with local government, and they did not understand the principles and processes of democratic governance. To address this lack of experience in local and decentralized self-governance, USAID/Iraq developed the Local Governance ProgramPhase II, commonly referred to as LGPII, and awarded a 2-year, $90 million base contract to the Research Triangle Institute (the contractor) in May 2005. The contract had 3 option years, 2 of which have been exercised, extending the contract through 2009. Including the option years, the award had increased to $370 million, and as of November 19, 2008, $290 million had been disbursed. The objectives of the LGPII activities were to consolidate gains made during the first Local Governance Program, from 2003 to 2005, and continue to work with Iraqis to establish and strengthen the conditions, institutions, capacity, and legal and policy framework for a democratic local governance system. The program focused on creating the capacity to govern at the provincial and lower levels through the following activities: •Promote policy reform in support of local governance. •of the roles and responsibilities of different levels ofSupport clarification government. •Promote increased efficiency of local service delivery. •Assist in the development of regularized mechanisms of citizen participation in governmental decisionmaking processes. •Capture learning through systematic study and reflection. In carrying out these activities, LGPII focused primarily on training members of provincial and local councils along with other local government officials. The mission had also signed an agreement with the contractor to implement the third phase of the program, LGPIII, effective January 1, 2009, through December 31, 2010, for approximately $145.5 million.
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Figure 1. Map of the 18 Provinces in Iraq
Source: USAID/Iraq
AUDIT OBJECTIVE
As part of its fiscal year 2008 annual audit plan, the Office of Inspector General in Iraq conducted this audit to answer the following question:
•Are USAID/Iraq’s local governance activities achieving intended results and what has been the impact?
Appendix I contains a discussion of the audit’s scope and methodology.
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AUDIT FINDINGS USAID/Iraq’s Local Governance ProgramPhase II (LGPII) was partially successful in strengthening Iraq’s emerging and fragile local governance system. In particular, the program achieved some success with the technical assistance and training that it provided to Iraq’s 18 provincial councils. LGPII’s technical assistance to the provincial councils primarily included a set of basic and intermediate training courses that were offered to council members. Courses titles included, among others, Introduction to Council Services, Public Budgeting and Auditing, Strategic Planning, and GovernmentMedia Relationship. Despite the harsh environment caused by the Iraqi insurgency, the provincial councils benefited from the courses, and16 of 18 councils met criteria for functioning.1 In addition, each of Iraq’s 18 provincial councils had finalized provincial development strategies for use as their provinces’ public investment plans, and 16 of the 18 councils had invested in projects listed in their respective provincial development strategies. Further, in the first 9 months of the year 2008, the provincial governments had contracted 60 percent of the $3.34 billion2 capital budget funds that had been in assigned to them by the national Iraqi Government. Despite such progress, only three provincial councils could show that more than 50 percent of their members demonstrated the performance of key competencies, such as the use of parliamentary systems and processes and the management and oversight of accelerated reconstruction and development program funds. Mission officials explained that the program may have been overly ambitious in expecting Iraq’s provincial councils to use parliamentary systems similar to state legislatures in the United States, because the councils had very limited legal powers and functioned more analogously to those of town councils. However, mission officials felt that the oversight of reconstruction and development funds was within the manageable interest of the councils. In addition to building the capacity of the provincial councils, LGPII also aimed to strengthen local governance by building the capacity of local council members and Iraqi governmental officials. However, while training these individuals, USAID/Iraq did not establish any basic training criteria or parameters to determine which Government officials should be trained or which type of training they needed. Instead, the mission approved a demand-driven and decentralized approach that essentially allowed Iraqi officials to enroll in whatever training courses they felt would benefit them. As a result, the implementing partner’s training program eventually grew to include over 100 varied training courses. Mission officials were not familiar with all the courses being offered, and the relationship between the courses and LGPII’s goals was sometimes unclear. 1a “functioning provincial council as satisfying the following:The implementing partner defined (1) written minutes or video documentation of meetings; (2) quorum present for at least 70 percent of meetings; (3) progress on developing provincial development strategy, annual work plan, and budget and/or capital investment project approval and execution; (4) appointment of a provincial governor by provincial council; and (5) filling any provincial council seats that became vacant. 2and U.S. Embassy Iraq’s Office of Provincial Ministry of Planning Source: Iraq’s Unaudited. Affairs.
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In addition to allowing Iraqi officials to enroll in whatever training courses they felt would benefit them, the implementing partner did not establish controls to prevent officials from taking courses more than once. Consequently, Iraqi governmental officials, including elected provincial and local council members, misused the training courses by taking some courses multiple times. Further, although the raw number of local officials trained was significant and measurable (26,6003), the success or short-term impact of that significant amount of training on improving local governance was not measured. However, from a longer-term perspective, mission officials said the training courses would build valuable relationships between USAID and the local governments. Besides providing training and technical assistance to provincial and local Iraqi officials, LGPII also aimed to use Geographic Information System (GIS) software to produce city maps with utility overlays to help plan for the delivery of essential services. However, progress in developing the maps has been slow. As of September 30, 2008, only two provinces had completed city property boundary maps, but neither of those maps included overlays showing utilities such as electricity, sewage, or water networks. Mission officials said that the program’s investment in a high-tech system like GIS may have been premature, but they felt that significant progress had been made in Baghdad City, which had invested $2 million of its own resources to supplement training and equipment provided by LGPII. LGPII also aimed to help Iraqis promote policy reforms by providing support and technical assistance to the Local Government Association, which is composed of provincial council members from each of Iraq’s 18 provinces. However, the association had not yet achieved two planned milestones related to local government interaction with the national Iraqi Government. The milestones included (1) a Provincial Fiscal Decentralization Law, to be drafted by the provincial councils, and (2) a legislative agenda, to be developed by the Local Government Association. Mission officials said that although the association was influential in drafting the law that established Baghdad as the capital of Iraq, the association remained a nascent, donor-driven organization and that original expectations of its influence on policy decisions pertaining to decentralization and its ability to develop a legislative agenda were not realistic. LGPII’s project activities largely ended on December 31, 2008, and consequently, we are not making specific audit recommendations to address the performance issues concerning GIS software or the Local Government Association. We are also not making a recommendation for the mission to redesign and refocus the training program offered under LGPII’s follow-on project, LGPIII, because the mission has already taken action to do so. During the design of that project, which began on January 1, 2009, mission officials recognized and acknowledged that the broad training mandate that they had approved for LGPII needed to be modified. Consequently, they designed LGPIII to focus on assisting provincial governments in carrying out their duties as prescribed by the 2008 Provincial Powers Law. LGPIII will still include training, but only as one tool among many to help provincial governments measurably improve performance.
3Unaudited. Source: Research Triangle Institute.
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Although USAID/Iraq has redesigned its Local Governance Program, we identified some additional areas that could be improved. For example, during LGPIII USAID/Iraq should (1) increase its oversight of training courses by approving curriculums of courses offered to Iraqi governmental officials, (2) implement controls to minimize repetitive training, (3) develop criteria for identifying and selecting participant trainees, and (4) prepare timely and accurate annual contractor performance reports. Each of these issues is discussed below.
Training Courses Need Increased Oversight by USAID/Iraq
Summary: As of October 2008, LGPII was offering 105 training courses, some with multiple modules per course, for Iraqi provincial and local council members and local governmental staff. According to USAID’s Automated Directives System 253.2(b), missions and their implementing partners are responsible for ensuring that participant training contributes to the achievement of the mission’s intermediate results or strategic objective. However, the relationship of some LGPII courses to the mission’s goals was not clear because the mission largely relied on its implementing partner to determine which training courses to offer and did not exercise its management oversight responsibility to ensure that only the most needed, relevant, and project-focused training was provided. Consequently, the partner spent project resources to develop and teach courses that may not produce the most benefits for the mission or for Iraqi governmental officials in the long term.
A primary goal of LGPII involved the development of the Iraqi Government’s capacity to deliver essential local services. To help achieve this goal, USAID/Iraq’s implementing partner had developed 17 core courses, including 12 basic and 5 intermediate courses, that aimed to provide members of provincial councils and local councils with the training they needed to perform their duties as council members. Course titles included Introduction to Council Services, Citizen Participation, Project Oversight, Public Budgeting and Auditing, Intergovernmental Relationships, and Strategic Planning. In addition to the 17 core courses, 88 supplemental training courses were offered, because some of the core and supplemental courses had multiple modules per course. These courses were designed as optional, on-demand training to address the varying needs of council members and local government officials to extend their skills and competence. The courses covered subjects such as general and financial management, transparency and accountability, agricultural development, computer skills, and gender mainstreaming. As of October 2008, 105 core and supplemental courses were available to Iraqi governmental officials. According to an official from the implementing partner, USAID/Iraq and the contractor had collaborated at the start of LGPII to determine which basic courses should be developed for provincial and local council members. Since that time, however, the number of training courses has increased substantially, but the mission's involvement in
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the training curriculum has been minimal and it has neither specifically approved nor disapproved any of the supplemental training courses. The contractor official further explained that provincial and local council members had asked for more advanced and specialized training. To meet these training requests, the contractor had developed the core intermediate courses and supplemental courses. Although all training courses provide some benefit, several of the 88 supplemental courses did not have a clear relationship to LGPII’s goal to increase the government’s capacity to deliver essential services. Examples of such courses were: •development courses including Drip Irrigation, Sprinkler Irrigation,Agricultural Design of Open Channels, Pesticides, Soil Sampling, and Fertilizers. •Computer skills courses including Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Email, MSN Messenger, and Hotmail. •Bill of Quantities for Civil ConstructionProject implementation courses such as and Quality Control of Concrete. In addition, some courses benefited only a few people. As illustrated in Figure 2, 45 percent of the course modules were attended by fewer than 200 trainees nationwide between May 2005 and September 2008. Figure 2. Analysis of Course Attendance Rates May 2005September 2008
55%
17%
13%
0 trainees rainees 15%1210 00 00 t 11 > 201 trainees
Through the end of September 2008, LGPII had provided training to over 28,000 individuals. A course’s attendance rate of 200 would constitute only 0.7 percent of those who received training. Using LGPII resources to develop and teach these poorly attended courses was not an efficient use of the project’s resources.
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