fred: walter kerr is with a group called unlock aid, formed in 2021 to draw attention to a system invate companies called implementing partners are awarded most contracts by usaid. walter kerr: one of the best things that government can do is to move away from measuring success in terms of outputs, how much money do we spend on a particular problem, and moving toward an orientation of results. fred: a lot of people will be shocked to hear that that's not the case. walter: well, it's true. about 98 percent of usaid grants pay for activities and not results. fred: and the results are not flattering, according to the agency's own inspector general's office, which studied usaid awards for three years, 2017 to 2019. >> 43% of them failed to achieve about half of the intended results. but in spite of that, they still got paid in full almost every time and sometimes more. fred: he says one reason for these poor results is that implementer companies rarely work with the communities targeted for help or with local aid groups. >> one study found that, when working with a local partner, as oppo

fred: we did hear from a usaid spokesperson taking issue with a comment made by walter kerr of unlockement that said it was incorrect to state that only 10% of usaid's total assistance funding reaches local communities, meaning in the countries targeted. and the statement goes on that this grossly misstates usaid's work, which reaches hundreds of millions of people around the globe every year. well, there's no dispute about reaching a lot of people. it is close to $40 billion, after all. when it comes to the number, taking issue with how much money is actually spent locally, there is a lot of opacity. it's a very elastic number depending on who is interpreting it. we asked the agency to furnish one that they thought would be more accurate but have not heard back. what is not in dispute among most experts is that the majority of usaid funds go to contracts with large international agencies which have high overhead that consume a lot of the dollars. amna: well fred, a number of the critics you featured paint a portrait of a very impersonal, very corrupt system. is it that simple? is tha