Thank you Mr. President.
I am delivering this statement on behalf of Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States, and my own country Israel.
Allow me to begin by thanking the director of the UNDP Evaluation Office for the annual report on evaluation and for the presentation today. I would also like to thank the Assistant Administrator for her statement and for the written management response. We appreciate the collective effort in preparing these documents.
We attach great importance to the evaluation function within UNDP, particularly to its independence, effectiveness and usefulness. The evaluation function is a critical instrument for improving performance and cultivating stakeholder confidence in the quality of UNDP’s work.
We appreciate the UNDP management's commitment to further improving evaluation performance at all levels. We commend UNDP and the Evaluation Office for their efforts in 2012 to foster a culture of evaluation among management and staff, through the development of an online evaluation training course and other tools.
Let me now briefly offer some specific comments on the annual evaluation report.
First, on resources.
To ensure independent and effective evaluation, UNDP must ensure that its Evaluation Office is adequately funded and staffed throughout the year. We note that while there is a slight increase in the Evaluation Office's expenditure in 2012, it constitutes a small percentage of the overall budget of the organization and is below the level considered by international development agencies to be necessary for an organization to derive useful benefits from its evaluation function. We call on UNDP to make sure that its Evaluation Office is properly funded and well-resourced to carry out its annual work plan.
Second, on gender.
We welcome the UNDP Evaluation Office's recognition of the relative weakness of the gender dimension in some of its important evaluations. We encourage the UNDP Evaluation Office to ensure that the gender perspective is well-incorporated in the Term of Reference of all future evaluations. We encourage UNDP to better mainstream gender throughout the evaluation work, including in the efforts to reinforce a culture of evaluation in the organization.
We believe that addressing gender issues will strengthen the quality of the evaluation function, and enhance its usage. We would welcome more systematic information regarding gender mainstreaming in UNDP evaluation performance in future reports.
Third, on national evaluation capacity.
We were pleased to see that support for national evaluation capacity in developing countries continues to be a priority for the Evaluation Office. We commend the work of UNDP country offices in different regions to engage with their national counterparts in a range of sectors to support national capacity for results-based management, including monitoring and evaluation, as detailed in the management response. We encourage UNDP management and evaluation office to work closely with their counterparts in other UN agencies in all levels to systematically enhance support for national capacities, and to report on this in the future.
On, the low number of evaluations focused on supporting crisis prevention and recovery:
We note in the evaluation that there is a discrepancy between the low number of evaluations carried out on crisis prevention and recovery as compared to the increased focus of UNDP support in this area and we welcome efforts to balance this and that more attention be paid to capacity at country level.
Fourth, on Peer Review.
We commend the UNDP Evaluation Office for commissioning a professional peer review on methodology and knowledge-sharing in the Evaluation Office. We encourage UNDP to provide the Board with more information regarding the follow-up on the peer review work, and the implementation of its findings and recommendations.
Fifth, on decentralized evaluation.
We welcome the slight increase in the total number of decentralized evaluations, from 226 in 2011 to 245 in 2012. In particular, we appreciate the Evaluation Office’s quality assessment of decentralized evaluations and the notable increase in quality of the decentralized evaluations. However we remain concerned with the high numbers of low quality decentralized evaluations, and urge the management to address the issue as a top priority. We encourage UNDP Evaluation Office to continue to advise the management on its effort and steps to take in this direction.
Sixth, on compliance.
We are pleased to see that the UNDP management's commitment to achieving full compliance has borne fruit. We welcome the notable increase in evaluation compliance – the vast majority of country programs completed in 2012 were compliant. We understand that this is due to the introduction of a new evaluation compliance standard policy. We encourage UNDP to make the necessary quality check.
Seventh, on evaluation capacity.
We are concerned by the decline in the number of monitoring and evaluation staff positions at the country level. This problematic development, as acknowledged by the management response, comes after two years of a slight increase in the overall number of country offices with dedicated monitoring and evaluation units. The decline also affects certain areas more than others. We encourage UNDP to be vigilant in its pursuit to strengthen evaluation capacity at the regional and country levels and treat it as a high priority. We would like to hear more about the plans that are currently being discussed on how to address these gaps.
Eighth, on joint evaluations.
We recognize that conducting joint evaluations is still very much a challenge – practically, conceptually and substantially. While joint evaluations were performed at the headquarters level, they were less frequently performed at the country level. Nevertheless, we encourage UNDP to devote more effort to expanding the number of joint evaluations where appropriate, in the context of the program of work for 2013-2014 and beyond.
In conclusion, allow me to reiterate our appreciation to the Evaluation Office and management for their work. We remain committed to working closely with UNDP to help the organization move forward on a path of continuous improvement.
Thank you, Mr. President.