The Foreign Assistance Transparency and Accountability Act passed the House 390-0 earlier this month.

The Act directs the Obama administration to develop performance measures and metrics for foreign assistance programs and to report back to Congress in a year on the results. It also requires within two years the establishment of a website for information on foreign assistance.

However, there is already a website (www.foreignassistance.gov) that isn’t populated with information from the State Department or USAID. This bill makes no mention of the existing website which duplicates usaspending.gov mandated by the law that Dr. Coburn and then-Senator Obama sponsored called the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act. This bill effectively requires the President to create a website in two years for something that already exists.

Regarding metrics and performance benchmarks, the bill’s intention is to enhance transparency and accountability within the federal government. However, the bill allows the federal government to develop its own grading system. Since the government has failed at metrics development in the past, this bill would provide little enhanced transparency since it essentially allows the federal government to develop, write, and then grade their own metrics test.

Under former President George W. Bush’s Administration, each program was given the following grades when looking at performance by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB): Effective, Not effective, or Results not demonstrated.

Using this previous standard, several commonsense questions can be raised about any program. For example, a simple set of metrics for foreign assistance would be: If the project is a road project, how many miles of road were built? What was the cost of dollars per mile?  Was it effective - did traffic and trade increase?  If it is a clean water program, how many people received clean water? What was the cost of dollars per gallon?  Was it effective - did disease rates go down? If it is a child literacy program, how many kids learned to read? Was it effective - did literacy rates go up? This is not a complicated process that requires years of study.

Unfortunately, there are no consequences in this legislation for the administration failing to follow existing law. Giving the administration until 2015 to use a website that exists today or to write up a report on metrics without instituting a single one of them is not reform and will harm the cause of transparency and accountability rather than help it.