Half of the data is missing
So if less than one percent of USAID funding has gone to Haitian groups, where has the rest of this money been directed? The lack of funding transparency makes it impossible to know for sure.
“Reports on contractors are not actually done according to the Office of Inspector General for USAID,” says Mr. Johnson.
USAID’s primary contractors are required to report on their subcontractors’ activities, and this data in turn is supposed to be made public. “But this information is nowhere to be found,” Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow with the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, wrote.
The USAID official told IPS that “all reported subcontract and sub-award information is published publicly” through a government website. But Mr. Ramachandran asserts that “almost half of the transactions data” are missing important data that identify individual vendors.
Lawmakers have noticed similar problems. Legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives in mid-December that would require a government audit of U.S. assistance in Haiti.