Even U.S. Officials Can't Keep Track of Foreign 'Assistance' Money: Report

An often opaque budget of over US$30 billion in "assistance" is disseminated worldwide in efforts to achieve U.S. objectives.

A new report by a United States government watchdog suggests that even U.S. officials have difficulty keeping track of their numerous foreign operations and “assistance” funds.

According to the report by the State Department's Office of the Inspector General, the U.S. Department of State does not have the oversight mechanisms to “obtain timely and accurate data necessary to provide central oversight of foreign assistance activities and meet statutory and regulatory reporting requirements.”

Each year the United States Congress allocates over US$30 billion in foreign “assistance” to the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which is then disseminated to various operations worldwide in an effort to achieve U.S. objectives around.

According to the report, funds go to support “diverse U.S. policy objectives” around the world, ranging the gamut from “security, public health, democracy and governance, humanitarian relief and nonproliferation, among others.”

The Department's foreign budget has frequently come under fire for the often opaque manner in which various interests are funded through it around the world, but the report suggests that the Department of State has yet to develop the means to properly manage the funds by collecting data and monitoring where money is going and how it is used.

“Lack of data hinders Department leadership from strategically managing foreign assistance resources, identifying whether programs are achieving their objectives, and determining how well bureaus and offices implement foreign assistance programs,” the report reads.

The report found that in many cases, budget information in individual offices is decentralized and officials rely on unreliable and “labor-intensive manual data collection processes.”

This most recent report was a follow up to a 2015 release in which the OIG made suggestions that the Department of State work to improve the ability to keep track of foreign “assistance” money, which led to the creation of a working group to develop an improved system. Two years later however, the OIG has found that no effective way of centralizing and monitering the money was developed.