UN Reform and Evaluation

1
UN Reform and Evaluation
Saraswathi Menon Regional Meeting on Evaluation
Policy 28 Nov 1 Dec 2006 Johannesburg
2
Outline

• Direction from the UN
• Response from UN Development Group and UN
  Evaluation Group
• Remaining Challenges

3
Triennial Comprehensive Policy Review General
Assembly Res 59/250 2004 what and how to evaluate

• Assess effective use of all capacities to provide
  comprehensive and flexible response to developing
  country demand
• Effectiveness in terms of impact on poverty
  eradication, economic growth and sustainable
  development
• Use data and expertise from within the system and
  national authorities

4

• Link evaluation to performance in achievement of
  developmental goals, effective use of UNDAF
• Importance of country level evaluation of UNDAF
• UNEG to make further progress in system-wide
  collaboration on evaluation, in particular
  harmonisation and simplification of
  methodologies, norms, standards and cycles of
  evaluation

5

• National government has primary responsibility in
  coordinating external assistance and evaluating
  its impact in contributing to national priorities
• Country level evaluations of UN development
  system conducted in close collaboration with
  national governments, and develop national
  evaluation capacities
• UN development system to apply lessons learned
  from ME to programming

6
High Level Panel on Coherence function of
evaluation

• Establish UN system-wide independent evaluation
  mechanism by 2008, to monitor delivery of system
  wide goals
• Peer reviews
• Common evaluation methodology across UN system by
  2010 to permit benchmarking and inter-agency
  comparisons

7
UNDG and UNEG Response

• UNDG collaboration on UNDAF evaluation, RDT
  collaboration in South Asia
• UNEG collaboration
• Principles for working together
• Norms and Standards for evaluation in the UN
  system
• Quality stamping, self assessment and peer
  reviews
• Organisational function of evaluation
  (Oversight, RBM)
• Capacity, competencies and certification
• Joint evaluations (humanitarian, country level)
• Position papers on emerging issues (JIU, HLCP)

8
Remaining challenges

• Independent evaluation function and systematic
  assessment of UN wide effectiveness covering
  specialised agencies and funds and programmes
• Would coalition of existing units be enough given
  varying levels of independence and capacity?
• How could system wide independent evaluation
  reinforce the priority of national capacity for
  evaluation?
• How can inter-agency alliances be built to
  support regional evaluation capacity

9

• Thank you