- Evaluation Plan:
- 2018-2021, Independent Evaluation Office
- Evaluation Type:
- ICPE/ADR
- Planned End Date:
- 12/2020
- Completion Date:
- 12/2020
- Status:
- Completed
- Management Response:
- No
- Evaluation Budget(US $):
- 20,300
Independent Country Programme Review: Tanzania
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Title | Independent Country Programme Review: Tanzania | ||||||||||||||||
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Atlas Project Number: | 92478,92475,95419,87082,61971,94384,95421,61743,68935,61911,61988,61944,68928,61947,60996,85002,103503,86631,102787,83123 | ||||||||||||||||
Evaluation Plan: | 2018-2021, Independent Evaluation Office | ||||||||||||||||
Evaluation Type: | ICPE/ADR | ||||||||||||||||
Status: | Completed | ||||||||||||||||
Completion Date: | 12/2020 | ||||||||||||||||
Planned End Date: | 12/2020 | ||||||||||||||||
Management Response: | Yes | ||||||||||||||||
Focus Area: |
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Corporate Outcome and Output (UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021) |
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SDG Target |
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Evaluation Budget(US $): | 20,300 | ||||||||||||||||
Source of Funding: | |||||||||||||||||
Evaluation Expenditure(US $): | 20,300 | ||||||||||||||||
Joint Programme: | No | ||||||||||||||||
Joint Evaluation: | No | ||||||||||||||||
Evaluation Team members: |
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GEF Evaluation: | No | ||||||||||||||||
Key Stakeholders: | |||||||||||||||||
Countries: | TANZANIA (UNITED REPUBLIC OF ) |
Lessons | |
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Findings |
Recommendations | |
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1 | [Linked to findings 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12] UNDP should sharpen its focus on strategic yet realistic objectives for policy and systems change, grounded in an understanding of the political economy and UNDP comparative advantages. While targeted local initiatives provide valuable tangible results, the key test of UNDP value as a development partner relates to its capacity to positively influence policy and systems at scale. Towards this objective, UNDP should look for opportunities for a more coordinated and collaborative approach to addressing key development challenges, working with other United Nations agencies, including through the Resident Coordinator’s office where appropriate, and development partners and international financial institutions, where grants can be a powerful tool for influence in support of loans. Such partnerships are crucial for UNDP to exert influence on a larger scale, scaling up pilot initiatives and sustainability of results. To facilitate this, UNDP will need to improve its communication with development partners and take a more prominent role in convening key stakeholders, acting as a neutral interlocuter and bridge between development partners and the Government. This was identified as an area of weakness in both this evaluation and the 2015 IEO evaluation. Given trends in the policy environment since the 2015 election, the space for UNDP to operate within the governance sphere will continue to be constrained. The challenge will be to identify areas of work that are closely aligned with government objectives and the interests and resources of other development partners. Private sector engagement, anti-corruption efforts and environmental management are areas that provide good prospects for expansion. To inform UNDP positioning and provide a basis for policy dialogue in focus areas, UNDP should establish a tracking system to monitor government commitments to results in areas where UNDP is working (gender equality, poverty and environment). |
2 | [Linked to findings 1, 3, 9, 11, 12 and 15] The country office should address fragmentation in its portfolio by: minimizing the number of small projects that rely mostly or exclusively on core funding; reducing the number of projects overall; and developing larger, more integrated and more flexible programmes. In doing so, UNDP will need to actively manage the risk that flexibility leads to a loss of coherence and strategic clarity. To mitigate this risk, UNDP must ensure that such programmes are supported by robust governance arrangements, transparent decision-making criteria for allocating resources to funded activities, clear project and staff performance expectations and assumptions, realistic budgeting and strong engagement and monitoring by staff. Because of their political and managerial complexities, management of flexible programme mechanisms needs to be led by staff with the highest level of development and management expertise available. UNDP should avoid engaging in small scale pilots that do not provide a plausible pathway for policy influence and engagement. |
3 | [Linked to findings 1, 4, 13 and 14] To ensure that the programme remains relevant and effectively contributes to outcome level results, the country office should annually review and update country level results frameworks, including consideration of: (a) removal of outputs that would not adversely affect the achievement of agreed outcomes; (b) adding new outputs as necessary to achieve a given agreed outcome; and c) changing outcome or output indicators to adequately measure the programme contribution. The results framework should be designed to adequately measure UNDP progress, and only include objectives, targets and indicators on which UNDP can realistically have a measurable influence. To this end, UNDP should work with the United Nations country team to revisit the structure of its current UNDAP results framework, building on lessons learned from its implementation. The country office should improve its results-based management practices to better support adaptive management, innovation, knowledge management, communication and accountability. This should focus on improving the quality and compliance of reporting, as well as strengthen the M&E and research capacity of individual projects, especially for innovative and pilot projects. Particular attention should be paid to ensuring clarity of intended outcomes in the case of initiatives approved with large funding gaps, given that these gaps will necessarily require reduced scope or ambition, or both. A theory of change approach should be used to ensure that there are plausible linkages between programme activities and intended outcomes, with a view to avoiding the implementation of activities that do not meet this test. |
4 | [Linked to findings 1, 6 and 10] To increase the scale of the impacts in gender equality, UNDP must move beyond a focus on participation and engagement, or small-scale interventions, to changes that have the potential to provide transformational benefits. Although UNDP has integrated gender mainstreaming across its programming during this CPD cycle, and achieved a silver gender seal status, UNDP should build on its awareness raising and capacity building work to support programming that provides tangible benefits for women and marginalized populations, ensuring that no one is left behind. UNDP can increase the impact of its gender mainstreaming work by focusing on poor and marginalized women, for example through access to justice work, and scaling up interventions that economically empower women, for example through agriculture value chains. The issue of the sustainability of gender equality results is important, particularly for the gender mainstreaming in parliamentary work. However, the effort to institutionalize gender mainstreaming through this intervention, for example through guidelines, induction training for new members of parliament and gender responsive budget analysis, is a good practice that should be replicated across other governance interventions in order to ensure sustainability. The country office should also continue with gender mainstreaming efforts and aim to upgrade to their gender seal status from silver to gold in the next CPD period. |