Participant Training

AID Administration of Training Agreements, Costs, and Support Services Gao ID: NSIAD-89-43FS December 22, 1988

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Agency for International Development's (AID) management of participant training activities, which are intended to help individuals from developing countries acquire the knowledge and resources essential to development and improvement of quality of life.

GAO found that AID: (1) spent between $200 million and $250 million during fiscal year 1987 to provide academic or technical training; (2) had agreements with 105 programming agents, about half of which were university organizations, for placing or managing academic participants, with 9 of the agents managing about 75 percent of the 7,331 academic participants; (3) obtained full and open competition for over 40 percent of the agreements; (4) made most agreements at the mission level to support individual mission projects and activities that involved small numbers of individuals; (5) believed that its largely decentralized management structure supported its efforts to contract with the private sector and small minority businesses; (6) has had no systematic means for collecting data on training expenditures, but is currently installing a new management tool for collecting such information; (7) encouraged, but did not require, missions to provide such support activities as predeparture, arrival and adjustment, and reintegration and follow-up services; (8) is developing a Participant Training Management System to monitor training activities; and (9) plans to establish a contract liaison/monitoring unit to conduct participant training program desk audits.



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