UNDP's Evaluation Policy

Statement delivered by Haoliang Xu, UN ASG and Director of UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Programme Support at the Executive Board Evaluation Policy session

September 4, 2019

Excellency Ambassador, Distinguished Members of the Executive Board

I would like, from the UNDP management perspective, to make a few brief comments, following the comprehensive presentation.

The 2016 evaluation policy was developed through extensive consultations between UNDP, the Independent Evaluation Office and Member States. The external review provided us with an opportunity to finetune the policy and help us ensure that we have a credible, well-functioning and useful evaluation function.

We were happy to note that the review concluded overall that the evaluation policy was well crafted, clear, useful and that it provided UNDP with a solid framework for the evaluation function. We also appreciated the recognition that the policy has helped enable the consolidation of an independent evaluation office with a strengthened role and quality of work and helped build a well-functioning evaluation architecture with arrangements that also include UNCDF and UNV.

Evaluations play a crucial role for decision-making and organizational learning, and we achieve more when we work together. Our collaboration with the Independent Evaluation Office has increased over the last couple of years, and the joint management response to the external review and the collaborative efforts to revise the policy indicate the close partnership that we now have.  

We believe that the actions planned in response to the evaluation policy review will help UNDP strengthen not only the quality and utility of decentralized evaluations, but the evaluation function overall. In particular, we believe that the regionally based IEO staff will provide valuable support to the decentralized evaluation function.

The revised version presented here today will also enable us to better link independent evaluations done by the Independent Evaluation office with decentralized evaluations commissioned by programme and policy units at the global, regional and country levels.

There are no simple solutions to the complex challenges UNDP seeks to address. This is why it is so important to learn from the past and from each other. The evaluation function is an important contributor to that.

Thank you for your attention.