Management Response

: Independent Evaluation Service (IES)
: 2014 - 2015 , Independent Evaluation Service (IES) (EO)
: Report of the Global Evaluation Advisory Committee on the external assessments of the evaluation function of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women
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: Independent Evaluation Service (IES)
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UN Women welcomes the report of the Global Evaluation Advisory Committee (GEAC) and appreciates the recommendations and guidance provided by the GEAC. Since its inception, UN Women has placed great importance on ensuring a strong evaluation function in order to support the entity in demonstrating its results and accountability, using evaluation for decision-making and learning from evaluations to make progress in gender equality and women’s empowerment. UN Women is pleased that the GEAC concluded that UN Women has strong central evaluation function, consistent with the findings of the three external assessments of the UN Women evaluation function. The GEAC also recognized the transformational character of gender responsive evaluation, which is unique to the mission of UN Women and extends to the IEO in its capacity as the custodian of the evaluation function. UN Women concurs with the GEAC conclusion that evaluation is central to UN Women’s mission as a means for achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment. UN Women Senior Management Team thanks the GEAC for highlighting the importance of using evaluative evidence to inform UN Women policies, programmes and strategies, as well as in key international fora in order to further the mission of UN Women, which will also demonstrate UN Women’s commitment to accountability and learning. Evaluation will also be used to further UN system-wide efforts to reach gender equality and women’s empowerment as encouraged by the GEAC. UN Women will leverage opportunities for sharing evaluative evidence and informing decision-making such as through the CSW, IANGWE, regional UN groups and UNCT processes, as appropriate. UN Women is committed to safeguarding and strengthening the evaluation function building on its strong foundation and taking it forward to ensure it continues to provide evaluations of strategic use to the organization and to the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment. Un Women Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) aims to be the leading entity on gender responsive evaluation both within UN Women and beyond, promoting participatory methodologies, sharing good practice, facilitating capacity development and generating demand for gender responsive evaluation. IEO has undertaken and continues to implement strategies for strengthening the quality of decentralized evaluation through various systems, which are explained further below. UN Women notes the GEAC conclusion that UN Women must ensure decentralized evaluation is a driver for national evaluation capacity development through strong local partnerships within the UN and beyond. UN Women will continue to strengthen its work in national evaluation capacity development. The management response outlines UN Women’s response and key actions for each of the recommendations of the GEAC report.

: Draft
Recommendation: The Global Evaluation Advisory Committee recommends that UN Women, the Executive Board, the Executive Director, and IEO seize the opportunity to recognize evaluation as an integral part of the organization’s mission. Strengthening the evidence base for its normative, operational and coordination roles will enhance its effectiveness. Evaluation evidence complements evidence from data analysis, monitoring, review and research.
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. Evaluation is seen as a core part of the organization and a means through which gender equality and women’s empowerment can be achieved. UN Women is also taking steps to enhance results based management systems to ensure enhanced planning, reporting and monitoring information is available on programming at UN Women
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Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Develop and roll-out a results management system that enables the systemic planning, monitoring and reporting against results Programme Division / PPGU 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
2. Ensure that all corporate evaluations scheduled in the Corporate Evaluation Plan for the period 2014-2015 are implemented in a timely and effective manner IEO, respective HQ divisions 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: The Committee further recommends that UN Women protect the strong performance of IEO and continue to strengthen the utility, credibility, and independence of evaluation, with particular focus on utility, innovation and country-based partnerships for decentralized evaluations
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. In 2014, the IEO was strengthened to ensure it can fulfill its mandate to a) provide evaluative evidence on the progress made by UN Women; b) provide technical support on gender responsive evaluation in UN Women through decentralized evaluation; c) provide technical support on gender responsive evaluation to the UN system; and d) gender responsive evaluation capacity development at the national and regional level through partnerships. IEO will continue to maintain a priority focus on improving and consolidating the profile and quality of its core business – corporate evaluations that are useful and timely to the achievement of UN Women’s mandate. IEO places great importance on ensuring a balance between learning and accountability. The IEO will continue its practice of active and close consultation with key stakeholders, with priority given to responding to management needs and policy making requirements of UN Women as well as Executive Board oversight responsibilities. The aim of IEO is to ensure relevance and utility of evaluation with the aim of enhancing use of evaluation for learning and decision-making. IEO will also continue to implement innovative gender responsive evaluation methodologies by adopting approaches specific to the context and needs, and share this experience both internally and externally. In 2015, IEO will be launching in collaboration with Human Resources and the Training Centre, a professionalization programme that includes the UN Women Evaluation Handbook, an online e-learning course based on the handbook and a coaching programme to ensure hands-on learning. Completion of this programme will lead to certification as a UN Women Gender Responsive Evaluation Manager, which will incentivize participation. IEO will also continue implementing quality assurance mechanisms including the Global Evaluation Oversight System (GEOS) and Global Evaluation Report Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS). At the same time, IEO is consolidating “evaluation process standards”, which will ensure field offices are compliant to appropriate processes to ensure quality and credibility of decentralized evaluations, by clarifying roles and responsibilities for UN Women staff and managers involved in evaluation processes while ensuring meaningful participation of stakeholders and impartiality. These initiatives will complement ongoing face-to-face training and other capacity development efforts and are aimed at enhancing the quality of decentralized evaluations leading to more credible evidence for decision-making and learning. IEO will develop new guidance for field offices on how to plan, manage and use Country Portfolio Evaluations, with the aim of enhancing the number and quality of strategic evaluations at field level. IEO and Regional Offices will support and encourage UN Women offices managing decentralized evaluations to identify opportunities for country-based partnerships with the aim of enhancing national capacity on gender-responsive evaluation. IEO will also be enhancing the gender and evaluation roster to facilitate identification of qualified professional evaluation consultants leading to enhanced quality of evaluation.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Roll-out, implement, monitor and report on the new “Evaluation Process Standards” aimed at strengthening quality and credibility of decentralized evaluations IEO, ROs 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
2. Develop and launch the new Professionalization of evaluation initiative IEO, DHR, TC and ROs 2015/12 Completed
3. Develop and launch the gender and evaluation roster IEO, ROs 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
4. Develop new guidance on Country Portfolio Evaluations IEO, ROs 2016/02 Overdue-Initiated
5. Report to the Executive Board on the performance of the UN Women evaluation function IEO, ROs 2015/12 Completed
Recommendation: The Committee recommends that each member of the Senior Management Team signal the importance of evaluation, through the demonstrated use of evaluation findings, to incentivize evidence-based advocacy, normative, and operational work. This commitment will also strengthen the attention paid to decentralized evaluation.
Management Response: UN Women Senior Management Team places great importance on the use of evaluative evidence to inform both UN Women programming and work to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment within the UN system and beyond. Therefore, it will continue to promote use of evaluation in their Divisions, and to use evaluation to drive advocacy, normative and operational work. Through the implementation of the Regional Evaluation Strategies, Senior Managers at regional and country offices will also enhance the use of decentralized evaluations. IEO will work with UN Women management to facilitate the use of evaluative evidence in programming and strategic policy documents. IEO is dedicated to identifying means for enhancing use of evaluation by better communicating evaluation results and supporting the tracking of management response. To facilitate use of evaluation, IEO will continue to synthesize evaluation findings of UN Women decentralized evaluation reports by producing meta-analysis, and support the Global Accountability and Tracking of Evaluation Use (GATE) system. IEO will also continue its practice of presenting corporate evaluation results via webinar for UN Women staff. In 2015, IEO will start reporting on the use of corporate evaluation results in its annual report to the Executive Board and UN Women.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Synthesize evaluation findings of UN Women decentralized evaluation reports by producing meta-analysis IEO, ROs 2015/11 Completed
2. Report to the Executive Board on use of corporate evaluation within the IEO annual report on the evaluation function IEO, respective HQ Division, ROs 2015/11 Completed
Recommendation: Concerning the independence of evaluation, the Committee recommends that (a) budget provisions be approved as a separate budget line in the organizational budget framework to be approved by the Executive Board, with the aim of achieving the target of 3% of programme budget; and (b) a solution be found to protect the tenure of evaluation staff.
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. Based on the request from the Executive Board (2014/3), UN Women will incorporate a separate budget line for evaluation activities in the Integrated Budget 2016-2017 with the aim of achieving the target of 3% of programme budget, which will be presented to the Executive Board at the second regular session in 2015. Additionally, UN Women encourages offices to reach the target of 3% of programme budget through evaluation planning guidance and quality assurance, and taking into consideration local contexts of resources constraints. UN Women will propose a budgetary solution to be able to address the tenure of IEO staff within the proposal for the Integrated Budget 2016-2017, consistent with the entity HR policies and standard practice in UN system agencies
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Incorporate a separate budget line for evaluation activities in the Integrated Budget 2016-2017 with the aim of achieving the target of 3% of programme budget. DFMA 2015/11 Completed
2. Propose a solution to protect the tenure of evaluation staff consistent with the entity HR policies and standard practice in UN system agencies. DFMA,DHR and EDO 2015/11 Overdue-Not Initiated
Recommendation: The Committee’s recommendations, set out above, cover most but not all of the various recommendations of the external assessments. The remaining recommendations from the external assessments, including those concerning the independence of IEO, should be addressed at a later date when revising the Evaluation Policy. The Committee recommends that an internal review, building on the results of the external reviews, should be undertaken to inform any revision of the Evaluation Policy. The process should be consultative, involving key stakeholders such as the Executive Board, Senior Management Team, and others. Such consultations may be expected to arrive at a model of independence that is appropriate to UN Women while safeguarding the impartiality and credibility of the organization’s evaluation function. The Committee recommends that the review be undertaken after ongoing processes to define the post-2015 Agenda, in particular agreement on the Sustainable Development Goals, the adoption of the next Quadrennial Comprehensive Progress Review, the adoption by UNGA of a Resolution on development evaluation as well as the deliberations of the General Assembly of the JIU Report of the UN evaluation system and many activities expected to take place in the 2015 International Year of Evaluation. It therefore expects that the best time to initiate the review the Evaluation Policy will be 2016, with a view to submitting a revised Evaluation Policy to the Executive Board in early 2017.
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. Under the guidance of the Global Evaluation Advisory Committee, IEO will lead the internal review of the Evaluation Policy in 2016 taking into account the external assessments completed by UNEG, JIU and MOPAN; GEAC recommendations; and policy recommendations emanating from the SDGs, QCPR, GA resolution on evaluation and any other relevant policy recommendations. The internal review will include an examination of issues related to independence as raised by the external assessments. EDO and IEO will engage stakeholders in the review, including Executive Board members and UN Women senior management and staff to ensure a comprehensive perspective.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Conduct internal review of Evaluation Policy EDO and IEO, under guidance of GEAC 2016/06 Overdue-Not Initiated
2. Recommendation re: revision of Evaluation Policy EDO and IEO, under guidance of GEAC 2016/02 Overdue-Not Initiated
Recommendation: The Committee does not recommend to repeat another peer review at that time in light of the numerous and thorough reviews undertaken in 2014.
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. UN Women, in consultation with Executive Board and GEAC, will determine the appropriate timing for another peer review based on the outcome of the review of the Evaluation Policy. This recommendation requires no action.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Key Action not added.
Recommendation: Recommendations based on GEAC report conclusions on UN Systemic Role, paragraph 13 In view of the role of UN Women in system-wide efforts to reach gender equality and women’s empowerment, suggests identifying the most effective channels for sharing evaluation evidence and influencing decision-making. These include, but are not limited to, the annual sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women and its expert group at global level, and the UNDAF at country level, in particular the UNCT’s monitoring and evaluation working group and the UNDG Quality Assurance mechanism at the regional level through the Regional UNDGs.
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. UN Women will continue to place great importance on supporting efforts to fulfil its UN System coordination mandate on gender responsive evaluation, supporting UN system entities to address emerging challenges from a gender perspective, as well as in informing intergovernmental normative processes. In particular, UN Women will identifying the most effective channels for sharing evaluation evidence and influencing decision-making in intergovernmental fora, to drive advocacy with external partners and to drive change in the UN system. The Director of IEO was elected Chair of UNEG to commence in April 2015, which will greatly facilitate visibility to gender responsive evaluation amongst UN agencies. IEO will continue to support task forces of UNEG. In particular, IEO will lead the development of the UNEG e-learning course on how to integrate human rights and gender in evaluation. UN Women will also continue to identify opportunities for conducting joint evaluations or reviews, such as the Joint Systemic review of gender equality in development. At the regional level, UN Women will continue its active leadership and contribution to UN regional evaluation groups on gender-responsive evaluation, which includes support to UN coordination at the country level. IEO will also continue its support to the System Wide Action Plan Evaluation Performance Indicator. In 2015, IEO will be working through UNEG to produce a report on good practices on gender-responsive evaluations identified through SWAP reports. IEO will also continue working closely with the UN Women UN Coordination division, Intergovernmental support division and other relevant divisions to identify effective channels for sharing evaluation evidence and influencing decision-making.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Identify the most effective channels for sharing evaluation evidence and influencing decision-making in intergovernmental normative processes and within the UN system. IGSD, UNCD, SPD, and the Policy and Programme divisions 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
2. Joint Systemic review of gender equality in development. IEO, UNEG 2015/12 Completed
3. Lead development of the UNEG e-learning course on how to integrate human rights and gender in evaluation. IEO 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
4. Support UN entities reporting on SWAP evaluation performance indicator and produce a report on good practices identified through SWAP reporting. IEO 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
Recommendation: The Committee sees opportunities to connect decentralized evaluations with national gender-responsive, evaluation capacity development. It also suggests working through existing initiatives for evaluation capacity development, building on IEO’s comparative advantage by focusing on gender-responsive evaluation activities. The Committee notes the importance of this work and its relevance to reinforcing nationally-owned and nationally driven interventions aimed at achieving greater gender equality and women’s empowerment. South-South and triangular initiatives can link institutions in countries where effective capacities already exist with partners where support is needed.
Management Response: UN Women fully agrees with this recommendation. UN Women will continue its work in furthering national gender responsive evaluation capacity development. UN Women country offices, under the leadership of Regional Offices and in the context of the Regional Evaluation Strategies, will explore opportunities to connect decentralized evaluations with national gender-responsive, evaluation capacity development. In 2015, IEO is planning to strategically use its role as Chair of EvalPartners to advocate for gender responsive evaluation in events related to 2015 International Year of Evaluation. IEO will also continue leading the EvalPartners task force on equity focused and gender responsive evaluation and its support to efforts for south-south cooperation amongst regional evaluation associations. IEO will continue to provide technical assistance to integrate a gender equality perspective into: National M&E systems and policies in selected countries; Regional and Global Parliamentarians Forums; and regional and national evaluation associations.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Not applicable
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
1. Advocate for gender responsive evaluation through partnerships: Chair EvalPartners and lead Task Force on equity focused and gender responsive evaluation. IEO 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated
2. Advocate for gender-responsive evaluation to be included/mainstreamed in the international events related to International Year of Evaluation. IEO 2015/12 Overdue-Initiated