Excellency Ambassador,

Distinguished Members of the Executive Board,

I would like to, from the UNDP management perspective, to make a few brief comments, following Indran’s comprehensive overview of our Joint management response.

We welcome the review of the UNDP evaluation policy as it provides us with the opportunity to fine-tune aspects of the current policy and engage internally as well as with Member States on ways to continue strengthening the credibility and utility of our evaluation function.

UNDP recognizes the crucial role that evaluations play for decision-making and organizational learning and has together with the Independent Evaluation Office undertaken efforts over the last couple of years to improve the decentralized evaluation process. The joint management response, which is presented here today, indicates the close partnership we have.

We are happy to note that the review overall concludes that the evaluation policy is well crafted, clear, useful; and that it provides UNDP with a solid framework for the evaluation function.

We appreciate 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.

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

Prior to concluding, I would like to highlight the value we see in the work of the Audit and Evaluation Advisory Committee. The Committee is an important part of the UNDP oversight function, and we look forward to continuing working together to strengthen its evaluation coverage.

Subject to the approval of the Executive Board, UNDP and the Independent Evaluation Office stand ready to submit a revised evaluation policy for consideration at the second regular session, to be held in September.