On 22 July the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published an audit of DOD, State and USAID's over $2.6 billion investment in Afghanistan's information and communications technology (ICT) sector.
The audit notes:
-- According to U.S. and Afghan officials, the ICT sector is generally seen as a success. USAID reports that, among other things, the sector contributed $1.81 billion in revenues to the Afghan government in 2013, employs about 130,000 Afghans, and provides mobile phone services to roughly 90 percent of the population.
-- According to DOD, the ICT sector is Afghanistan's greatest source of foreign direct investment, largest remitter of taxes to the government, and largest licit employer.
-- U.S. agencies obligated over $2.6 billion to Afghanistan's ICT sector, but the full scope of U.S. efforts is unknown.
-- Because the agencies were not required to track their ICT efforts in a centralized database, the information reported to SIGAR by DOD, State, and USAID may not be comprehensive or entirely reliable.
-- Through our own review, SIGAR identified a $400 million, DOD-funded ICT contract that was not included in the data DOD reported to us.
-- State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs reported that its Justice Sector Support Program, funded at approximately $205.5 million, included one ICT-related activity. Funding for the system cannot be disaggregated from the larger program.
-- USAID officials also told us they were not able to provide information on some programs implemented before 2005. Completion of these efforts is past the agency's timetable for records retention.
-- U.S. agencies took steps to coordinate their efforts between themselves and with other entities; however, this coordination varied in form between formal mechanisms, such as ISAF TAT and the Telecommunications Working Group, and more informal coordination with the ministries.
Read the audit here.
Comments
SIGAR's audit faults USAID, State and DoD as follows: "U.S. agencies took steps to coordinate their efforts between themselves and with other entities; however, this coordination varied in form between formal mechanisms, such as ISAF TAT and the Telecommunications Working Group, and more informal coordination with the ministries."
This is a typical Sopko/SIGAR-type "finding", couching the obvious in the most negative way possible.
Why should it be otherwise, Mr. Sopko? Development and military agents in irregular warfare coordinate in all of the myriad ways possible--formal, informal, institutionalized, ad hoc, systematic and asystematic. Diversity in coordination is a good thing--it's "normal", it's a strength, and it's something to be encouraged if not formally mandated. Coordination will, moreover, over the life of multi-donor programming in a sector such as ICT, naturally vary in time and space as the sector work evolves.
Instead of criticizing use of both formal and informal coordination, SIGAR should be recognizing that both work and both are essential, and congratulating the various actors for the kinds and levels of ICT sector coordination that have made the multi-USG and multi-donor agency ICT work in Afghanistan such a success.
To put the entire body of Afghan ICT work into context for Congress and the American people, moreover, the report should also have at least recognized the exponential increase in importance of ICT to anti-terrorism, FID, UW, COIN and stability operations in the last few years, rather than focus on just the sector's (albeit very important) contribution to the Afghan national economy.