The 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), the basis of many aid policy initiatives, called for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to plan foreign aid budgets and programs "based not on dollars spent, but on outcomes achieved," and for USAID to become "the world leader in monitoring and evaluation." The 2015 QDDR continued the emphasis on evaluation, emphasizing the strategic use of data and the need to build agency evaluation capacity. The current emphasis on evaluation is not new. The importance, purpose and methodologies of foreign aid evaluation have varied over the decades since USAID was established in 1961, responding to political and fiscal circumstances, as well as evolving development theories. In most cases, clear evidence of the success or failure of U.S. assistance programs is lacking, both at the program level and in aggregate. Another reason is that historically, most foreign assistance programs are never evaluated for the purpose of determining their impact, either at the time of implementation or retrospectively. In recent years, however, aid-implementing agencies have taken steps to improve both the quantity and quality of aid evaluations, and to make better use of the information gleaned from those efforts. A 2016 USAID review identified notable improvements in evaluation practices at USAID since implementation of a new evaluation policy in 2011. Performance evaluations have typically been carried out sporadically, to address questions of efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability, among other things. Aid evaluation practices and policies have variously focused on different evaluation objectives, including meeting program management needs, institutional learning, accountability for resources, informing policymakers, and building local oversight and project design capacity. The Millennium Challenge Corporation, established in 2004, has been regarded by many as a leader in aid evaluation, largely as a result of its demanding evaluation policy. Some of these challenges are discussed below. Funding and Personnel C onstraints . Compressed Timelines . Country Ownership and Donor Coordination . Security . Evaluations are rarely designed or used to inform policy. 2139 in the 111 th Congress, introduced by Representative Howard Berman), which called for "a process for applying the lessons learned and results from evaluation activities, including the use and results of impact evaluation research, into future budgeting, planning, programming, design and implementation of such United States foreign assistance programs." The Foreign Assistance Revitalization and Accountability Act of 2009 ( S. 1524 in the 111 th Congress, introduced by then Senator Kerry) called for the creation of a Council on Research and Evaluation of Foreign Policy to do cross-agency evaluation of aid programs. The State Department followed suit in February 2012 with a new evaluation policy that was similar in many respects to the USAID policy, and MCC updated its policy in May 2012. Issues for Congress

While some momentum on foreign aid evaluation reform has originated within the Administration, Congress may have significant influence on this process. Not only can Congress mandate or promote a certain approach to evaluation directly through legislation, as has been proposed, it can modulate Administration policies by controlling the appropriations necessary to implement the policies. Congress may also influence how, or if, the information resulting from evaluations will impact foreign assistance policy priorities. The Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act ( H.R. It was enacted and signed into law in July 2016 as P.L. Appendix.
In most cases, the success or failure of U.S. foreign aid programs is not entirely clear, in part because historically, most aid programs have not been evaluated for the purpose of determining their actual impact. Many programs are not even evaluated on basic performance. The purpose and methodologies of foreign aid evaluation have varied over the decades, responding to political and fiscal circumstances. Aid evaluation practices and policies have variously focused on meeting program management needs, building institutional learning, accounting for resources, informing policymakers, and building local oversight and project design capacity. Challenges to meaningful aid evaluation have varied as well, but several are recurring. Persistent challenges to effective evaluation include unclear aid objectives, funding and personnel constraints, emphasis on accountability for funds, methodological challenges, compressed timelines, country ownership and donor coordination commitments, security, and agency and personnel incentives. As a result of these challenges, aid agencies do not undertake evaluation of all foreign aid activities, and evaluations, when carried out, may differ considerably in quality.
The Obama Administration has taken several steps to enhance foreign assistance evaluation.
2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) resulted in, among other things, a stated commitment to plan foreign aid budgets "based not on dollars spent, but on outcomes achieved." USAID introduced a new evaluation policy in January 2011. The State Department, which began to manage a growing portion of foreign assistance in the 21st century, introduced a new evaluation policy in February 2012, which was updated in January 2015. The Millennium Challenge Corporation revised its evaluation policy in 2012, and soon after began releasing its first evaluation reports.
The agency evaluation policies differ in several respects, including their support for impact evaluation, but reflect a common emphasis on evaluation planning as a part of initial program design, transparency and accessibility of evaluation findings, and the application of data to inform future project design and policy decisions. Aspects of the three evaluation policies are compared in the Appendix.
Recent reports and policy reviews suggest that aid evaluation frequency and quality have improved in recent years, though progress has been uneven. Attention to this issue remains strong, both within the Administration and among Members of Congress. The 2015 QDDR reemphasizes the role of evaluation, calling for more evaluation training, more strategic use of data, and more timely analysis of lessons learned, among other things. Though recent evaluation reform efforts have been agency-driven, Congress has considerable influence over their impact. Legislators may mandate a particular approach to evaluation directly through legislation (e.g., the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act, P.L. 114-191, enacted in July 2016), or may support or fail to support Administration policies by controlling the appropriations necessary to implement the policies. Furthermore, Congress will largely determine how, or if, any actionable information resulting from the new approach to evaluations will influence the nation's foreign assistance policy priorities.