Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Agency for International Development's (AID) Malaria Immunology and Vaccine Research (MIVR) project, focusing on whether: (1) the procedures and processes AID used to select research and support subprojects ensured funding for high-quality, relevant, cost-conscious subprojects; (2) AID instituted an effective, impartial system to monitor performance; (3) AID periodically evaluated the malaria project's relevance, impact, and management; and (4) AID adequately subjected project expenditures to financial oversight and audit.
GAO found that: (1) AID waived competition for 10 of the 11 subprojects based in part on inaccurate documentation that the MIVR technical office sent to AID procurement officials, and funded at least three proposals that received negative preaward evaluations; (2) insufficient supervisory oversight over project staff and activities resulted in questionable funding actions, management practices, and undetected financial transactions; (3) AID relied on network members and a few external experts to review subproject performance and did not ensure adequate project expenditure audits and oversight; (4) AID acquired more than 1,400 research monkeys with no comprehensive plan to coordinate their purchase, housing, or care, resulting in its purchase of monkeys with limited malaria research use, wasted funds for housing and care, and maintenance of demographic and biomedical databases that did not provide complete census information for inventory accountability purposes; (5) in 1987, AID took corrective actions to expand the number of external auditors, improve subproject selection and monitoring processes, initiate fraud investigations, and replace a project officer pending a criminal investigation of his activities; (6) AID still had not developed adequate guidance for external reviewer selection, redesigned project monitoring, audited several subprojects, or developed a comprehensive primate management plan; and (7) although AID requested the Institute of Medicine to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of global malaria control activities and options, it needed to decide whether to continue funding malaria research.
