From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Watchdog Report: USDA's Oversight of International School Food Program Audio interview by GAO staff with Tom Melito, Director, International Affairs and Trade Related GAO Work: GAO-11-544: International School Feeding: USDA's Oversight of the McGovern-Dole Food for Education Program Needs Improvement Released on: May 19, 2011 [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the Government Accountability Office. It's May 19, 2011. The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program provides donations of U.S. agricultural products and technical assistance for school food programs in the developing world. Last year it served about 5 million beneficiaries in 28 countries with about $200 million in funding. A group led by Tom Melito, a Director in GAO's International Affairs and Trade Team, recently reviewed USDA's oversight of the McGovern-Dole Program. GAO's Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Tom to learn more. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Can you give a sense of the goals and scope of the McGovern-Dole program? [ Tom Melito: ] The program is designed to provide feeding children in very poor countries in a school setting. The goal is to basically address two development concerns. These are children who are chronically food insecure and they also have weak school systems, and the notion is that we can actually provide them food within a school setting; we can address both deficiencies. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team identified some weaknesses in USDA's oversight of the program. Can you elaborate on what these were? [ Tom Melito: ] Sure. The program has three main goals: nutrition, education, and sustainability. The grant approval process does a good job of trying to align the funding to those three goals, so it makes sure they're providing all the grants try to do all three things. Where it breaks down, though, is on the implementation. Once the money is being dispersed, we don't think USDA is doing a good job to make sure that the NGOs and World Food Program are in fact making sure those things are being addressed and then after the programs are finished, they are not evaluated programs to see whether or not they have the impact that they were looking for. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] To what extent did you find that these concerns raised in the report affect the ability of the program to achieve its stated objectives? [ Tom Melito: ] The short answer is nobody knows; there is some weak evidence on program impacts but it's mostly self-reported by the organization implementing it so it's not independent. There have been some academic studies which show mixed results. Our report hopefully will have USDA put a lot more effort into this, and maybe in a few years we can actually know how the program is working. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] You also followed up on a previous audit that had been conducted by the USDA Inspector General on the program's internal controls. What did you find has been done to address those concerns? [ Tom Melito: ] Several years ago the Inspector General of the USDA came out with two reports identifying a number of financial control weaknesses and had 11 recommendations to address those weaknesses. We followed up on their recommendations and found that most of them have been either partially or fully implemented. There is one lingering financial control weakness which we definitely wanted to highlight. Once a grant has been completed, it is important for the auditors of USDA to go through all the paperwork to ensure that all the financial controls have been implemented properly and there is no money that is owed to the United States government. We find that in some cases it takes them 5 more years after completion of the grant to do this process; that is way too long. There has been a number of cases where the U.S. government has been owed money and the NGO or the organization doesn't pay it back until they're told. So we want the USDA to establish some clear guidelines on closing out these grants and doing it in a more timely way. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Can you talk a little bit about how your team went about conducting this work? [ Tom Melito: ] Certainly. These are programs that are designed to be implemented in some of the poorest countries in the world, and part of what our team does is actually go out and visit the projects, so we visited projects in three different countries, Guatemala, Cambodia, and Kenya. Just to talk a little bit about the Kenya trip, it was in some of the most remote parts of the country. It took the team a long time to get there. They ended up having to stay in what would be equivalent to sort of a dormitory setting near the facility that they visited, but they were very struck at how poor the people were but how important projects like this are to them. So it was important to visit it. They learned a lot. It's difficult travel but it's rewarding travel. [ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Finally, what steps is GAO recommending that USDA take to ensure taxpayer dollars are being spent responsibly and effectively through this program? [ Tom Melito: ] This report addresses both program effectiveness and financial controls, and we have recommendations on both areas. In order to help ensure the program is effective, we want them to improve both their monitoring of the program and their evaluations of the program. On financial controls, we want them to provide guidance on closing out grants so that it is done timely and also make sure the U.S. government, if it's owed money, is paid back in a timely way. [ Background Music ] [ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO's Web site at GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next edition of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.