- Evaluation Plan:
- 2015-2020, Tunisia
- Evaluation Type:
- Final Project
- Planned End Date:
- 11/2020
- Completion Date:
- 09/2020
- Status:
- Completed
- Management Response:
- No
- Evaluation Budget(US $):
- 15,000
Évaluation finale - Assistance électorale
| Document | Type | Language | Size | Status | Downloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 TDR_Evaluation_Finale_PAET_VF.pdf |
tor | French | 272.47 KB | Posted | 78 |
| UNDP TEAP final evaluation_Final report.pdf |
report | English | 1689.21 KB | Posted | 56 |
| Title | Évaluation finale - Assistance électorale | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlas Project Number: | 00088815 | ||||||||
| Evaluation Plan: | 2015-2020, Tunisia | ||||||||
| Evaluation Type: | Final Project | ||||||||
| Status: | Completed | ||||||||
| Completion Date: | 09/2020 | ||||||||
| Planned End Date: | 11/2020 | ||||||||
| Management Response: | No | ||||||||
| UNDP Signature Solution: |
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| Corporate Outcome and Output (UNDP Strategic Plan 2018-2021) |
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| SDG Goal |
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| SDG Target |
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| Evaluation Budget(US $): | 15,000 | ||||||||
| Source of Funding: | CS Resources | ||||||||
| Evaluation Expenditure(US $): | 13,800 | ||||||||
| Joint Programme: | No | ||||||||
| Joint Evaluation: | No | ||||||||
| Evaluation Team members: |
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| GEF Evaluation: | No | ||||||||
| Key Stakeholders: | |||||||||
| Countries: | TUNISIA |
| Lessons | |
|---|---|
| 1. | 1. Outline a gender strategy in the project document or develop it in the early stages of the project implementations to offer clear directions on how to support national counterparts in their |
| 2. | 2. Outline an explicit theory of change: the project document underlying theory of change was valid but not explicitly outlined. A theory of change should be integrated in future project documents to assess whether the allocated resources contribute to the project objective(s), outputs and effects. |
| 3. | 3. Review the program framework to reflect new realities: a review of the overall project intended outputs, indicative activities, and other relevant elements would have reflected the new reality that emerged at the middle of the project implementation, especially the challenges faced by the ISIE. |
| 4. | 4. Take into account the lessons learned from the difficulties to raise funds. The fundraising strategy should ensure that all relevant UNDP instances at national, regional and HQ levels, as well as the UN EAD, are actively involved to avoid discontinuity of funds. This includes raising awareness of funding partners on the value of supporting electoral authorities through an electoral cycle approach. The uncertainties and ultimately TEAP funds discontinuity led to gaps in filling advisors’ positions, resulting in increased workload on the existing advisors. Filling these positions would have allowed for better support in particular to the ISIE external communication and public outreach activities. |
| 5. | 5. Project strategic guidance: national counterparts and funding partners expressed satisfaction with the strategic directions formulation through the preparations and holding of the Board meetings. |
| 6. | 6. Coordination amongst electoral support implementers: that coordination was ‘organic’ in the words of one interviewee but not regular and systematic. It relied on prior professional relationships of these organizations representatives. It is advised to start again regular formal coordination meetings with electoral stakeholders and direct electoral support implementers in Tunisia. This would also be necessary in view of the changing staff and arrival of new players, such as the Council of Europe new project funded by the EU in support of independent authorities, including the ISIE and the HAICA. |
| Findings | |
| 1. | 1. The TEAP project was a valuable and relevant electoral support project over the 2015-2020 period, in a context of fluid democratic transition. The project provided technical assistance, training and equipment to help the ISIE and the HAICA, two new independent institutions, to better implement their mandate. The support to longer-established institutions such as the Court of Auditors and the Administrative Tribunal, although at a smaller scale, was equally beneficial. This took place through targeted interventions both at the level of ICT infrastructure and solutions as well as technical expertise and exchange between practitioners. |
| 2. | 2. The project intervention supported the holding of democratic local and national elections in 2018 and 2019, in a context of political and at time legal uncertainties that complicated the work of electoral authorities. In particular for the ISIE, the support around elections came at a time of important internal challenges that could have had very negative repercussions on the elections conduct. |
| 3. | 3. The main impact of results is always imprecise due to the length of the period covered by this evaluation and multiple factors influencing impacts, but key TEAP accomplishments include: |
| 4. | 4. The overall project management was good and could benefit from the accumulated experience from the previous SEPT project. Project international and national staff are recognized by all interviewees as very professional and able to adapt to changing situations. This constituted a key positive assessment of the project evaluation. Lack of continuous collocation with the ISIE was not an issue, while in reality there were periods when project advisors were working for weeks, especially around elections, in the ISIE premises. TEAP is therefore a good example of the importance of positive and close interaction with national counterparts. |
| 5. | 5. An indication of good national ownership of the process was the overall maturity of working relationship with the project advisors and consultants where national stakeholders seemed in many cases to know what they needed and how the TEAP project could support these needs. |
| 6. | 6. A review of the program framework with an adaptation of the overall intended outputs and indicative activities could have been undertaken to reflect the new reality of the ISIE that emerged in mid 2017 at the middle of the project implementation and affected TEAP ability to fully pursue the two project outputs. |
| 7. | 7. TEAP fundraising has been a challenge that brought uncertainties, which have affected the project efficiency, although the project team showed a lot of professionalism and sought the least damaging solutions during the one-year period between 2018 and 2019 when the project downscaled due to lack of funds. |
| 8. | 8. After more than eight years of international electoral support, there is no exit strategy in place to phase out the assistance over time. In view of the multiple challenges posed by the evolving reality of the democratic transition, it is still premature to significantly reduce this assistance. As noted in previous points, new challenges have emerged at a time when institutions and democratic culture still need to grow deeper roots. |
| Recommendations | |
|---|---|
| 1 | Stay engaged and support electoral stakeholders in order to further develop and integrate the progress already achieved through TEAP and other international electoral support projects. Continue to implement a differentiated approach to different stakeholders, in line with their capacities of integration, their needs and requested assistance. |
| 2 | 2. At the same time, help national stakeholders such as the ISIE that needed direct support that substituted missing capacities during 2018 and 2019 elections to move away from that model, |
| 3 | 3. Continue following an electoral cycle approach to future support in order to ensure that it contributes to long-term incremental capacity increase. This will also ensure that the project operates in synchronisation with larger democratic transition developments that impact the electoral support. |
| 4 | 4. Continue supporting high value actions reinforcing institutional structures and mechanisms such as ICT solutions and infrastructure. Integrate into that support needs arising from prolonged situations of social distancing and more limited human interactions as a result of Covid19 pandemic. |
| 5 | 5. Integrate into future support, legislative, regulatory, institutional and practical changes related to the recommendations from national and international election observation missions. A number of recommendations have been similar for the 2018 and 2019 elections43 and therefore require urgent action in order to improve future elections. Some of the most urgent include to: • Strengthen the transparency on financing of paid political advertising on social networks as well as the location of account administrators, and guarantee the obligations to protect users' personal data online. |
| 6 | 6. Continue close coordination with other international democracy support organizations, and formalize coordination with other organizations specifically those supporting electoral stakeholders. In the case of the ISIE, that includes the UNDP, IFES, international IDEA and more recently the Council of Europe. |
| 7 | 7. Develop a realistic fundraising strategy for TEAP 2 in order to avoid the pitfalls of the TEAP 1 fundraising by ensuring that all relevant national and international UNDP levels as well as UN AED are mobilized and that funding partners understand the need for longer term electoral support in the framework of a still fragile democratic transition. |
| 8 | 7. Develop more systematic approaches through TEAP and national counterparts strategies in order to better support gender equality, in legal and regulatory frameworks as well as in practice. |
| 9 | 8. Develop specific activities aimed at furthering inclusion of voters and their participation in political life, such as for women, the youth, handicapped as well as other vulnerable groups. These elements are commented in the following section related to TEAP 2 project. |
| 10 | 9. Develop specific activities aimed at addressing in law and practice the role of social media prior and during electoral periods, as well as projects countering disinformation. These elements are commented in the following section related to TEAP 2 project. |