"The purpose of the final evaluation was to provide the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) and the U.S. Agency for International Development with an assessment of the relevance, effectiveness, and lessons learned from OTI’s mega-program in Afghanistan. Since evaluations of the media program had been undertaken and a study of management issues was planned, this evaluation addressed the following fundamental questions: 1. Was OTI strategic? 2. Did OTI promote government legitimacy? 3. Did OTI’s use of participatory democratic processes increase citizen’s connections to each other and to local authorities?" (Executive summary, page 6)

"OTI was strategic in its approach to its first mega-program ever. Its strategy focused from the beginning on support to the Bonn Agreement transition process, and also united around three basic orientations: supporting and legitimizing the new Afghan central government; promoting participatory democratic processes in communities; and developing the objectivity and outreach of the Afghan media. OTI strategic emphasis on top-down government support and bottom-up community democratization usually merged in an explicit strategy to connect community leaders with government representatives in a process of community infrastructure rehabilitation. While strategically relevant, these three orientations were not all equally successful in application. Moreover, measurable objectives were never developed, nor were there significant shifts in strategic orientation once the initial crisis period had passed by June 2002. With the exception of the media program, implementation methodologies developed in the first months generally carried down to the end of the overall program. The media program, evaluated separately by the USAID Center for Development Information and Evaluation (CDIE), was the most successful of the three objectives; promotion of participatory democratic processes in communities least successful." (Page 7)