Decentralized evaluations

The majority of UN Women’s evaluations are decentralized, which means they are managed by regional, multi-country and country offices in partnership with national stakeholders and other development partners, and conducted by independent external evaluators. The Independent Evaluation Service, mainly through its regional evaluation specialists, provides support and technical assistance to field offices to strengthen evaluation culture and capacities and help fulfil their responsibilities under the Evaluation Policy.

To improve the quality and use of decentralized evaluations, the Independent Evaluation Service has established the Global Evaluation Reports Assessment and Analysis System (GERAAS) (see also GERAAS standards and GERAAS rating matrix). The GERASS is an organization-wide system established to assess the quality of the evaluation reports of UN Women. In addition to providing the UN Women Executive Board and management with an independent assessment, the System’s executive feedback, detailed analysis and recommendations improve the quality of evaluative evidence and evaluation oversight functions. The GERASS uses the UNEG evaluation reports standards as a basis for review and assessment while ensuring specific standards relevant to UN Women. All final evaluations are assessed by an external independent reviewer (2013 Meta-Evaluation, 2014 Meta-Evaluation).

The Independent Evaluation Service has also established a Global Evaluation Oversight System to build awareness and sustain action on evaluation functions among senior managers and launched the Global Accountability and Tracking of Evaluations System (GATE). As part of UN Women transparency, accountability and organizational learning, the UN Women Independent Evaluation Service Gender Evaluation Consultant Database is another resource that allows UN Women staff to access a wide range of evaluation and gender experts to support the conduct and management of gender-responsive evaluations. The Roster allows individual experts and firms with experience in both evaluation and gender equality the opportunity to submit a brief profile that will be accessible to all UN Women staff for consideration for evaluation-related consultancy assignments.

In addition to the technical support of Regional Evaluation Specialists, internal evaluation capacities are developed through guidance, such as the UN Women Evaluation Handbook: How to manage gender-responsive evaluation, e-learning courses, and the Guidance on country portfolio evaluations in UN Women.