International Development and Programs (Development Work) - International Development and Programs (Development Work)

A performance management plan is a tool to plan and manage the process of monitoring, evaluating, and reporting progress toward achieving an assistance objective. USAID’s Automated Directives System (ADS) 203.3.3 requires that assistance objective teams prepare a complete performance management plan for each of their assistance objectives. Among other things, a performance monitoring plan states the full set of performance indicators that the assistance objective team will use to assess progress over the life of the program. The performance management plan should also:

• Justify briefly why each performance indicator was selected.
• Provide baseline values and targeted values for each performance indicator included in the performance management plan.
• Specify the source of the data and the method for data collection in enough detail that an objective observer can understand how the raw data are collected, compiled, analyzed, and reported.
• Describe known data limitations of each performance indicator by discussing any data quality limitations and steps to be taken to address them. Assistance Objectives teams must also ensure that all data used to report performance to Washington meet USAID data quality standards.
• Describe the data quality assessment procedures that will be used to verify and validate the measured values of actual performance of all the performance information.

USAID’s Performance Management Toolkit also addresses performance management plans, stating that a complete performance management plan contains a statement of all performance indicators that will be used to assess progress over the life of the assistance objective and that performance management plans shall be reviewed and revised at least annually.

General Recommendations

• Provide staff with training regarding the requirements of performance management and evaluation and document the training.

• Develop a written comprehensive performance management plan for programs.

Source: AUDIT REPORT NO. 4-663-10-003-P  MARCH 30, 2010

The recommendations are derived from audit reports of the Office of the Inspector General. The source refers to the audit report, which is available on this site as part of the Audit Database Project: an educational tool for compliance with USAID regulations.  Please see the disclaimer of this site before using recommendations.