Responding to the UNDP Evaluations Unit

Abstract

Abstract:  The author of an indicator that tests evaluation system compliance with good governance principles addresses the UNDP’s response to his article by offering an empirical test of the UNDP’s commitment to reform.  While the UNDP Evaluations Office claims to be working on reforms, the test exposes the unwillingness of the UNDP Evaluations Office to take even a simple step that would correct the problems they admit exist.  When presented with the chance to support reform on a real case – a de-politicized evaluation contract that protects professional standards and offers public accountability for the Spanish government’s MDG-Fund to the UNDP – the Vice Director of UNDP’s Evaluations Unit failed to support a single change.  The author believes that public oversight of international organizations has been so weakened that not even their evaluation units understand anymore what democratic, public control means or how it works and they have now become part of an embedded culture that is unable to even conceive of how to apply simple public solutions.