Ireland Evaluation Profile - Evaluation Systems Review 2016

II. IRELAND

Ireland Evaluation and Audit Unit / Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Evaluation Mandate Irish Aid is the Irish Government’s official aid programme and is a division of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (the Department). The Irish Aid Evaluation Policy (2007) defines evaluation in the Irish Aid context as being the systematic and objective assessment of the design, implementation and results of an ongoing or completed project, programme or policy by assessing the effectiveness of the intervention against its stated objectives.

Evaluations are overseen and planned for by the Evaluation and Audit Unit, an independent entity within the Department. Their mission is: “To maintain an efficient, effective, relevant and independent evaluation and audit function within Irish Aid through the execution of evaluation and audit exercises, facilitating acceptance of their findings and contributing to policy development within the overall programme” (Evaluation Policy 2007).

The Unit is mandated to evaluate not only the ODA managed by the Department, but also other activities across the Department. The Evaluation and Audit Unit also provides the internal audit function for the Department.

The Department intends to review and update the 2007 policy in 2016.

Responsibility and scope of activities Both centralised and decentralised evaluations are undertaken of Ireland’s ODA. Centralised evaluations are implemented by the unit often in collaboration with multilateral and bilateral partners.

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The Unit’s responsibilities cover a wide range of activities such as:

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the preparation of annual and multi-annual work plans for the Unit

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management of evaluation-related activities

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quality assurance of evaluations; dissemination of key findings and publication of reports;

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providing feedback from evaluations to policy, strategy, planning and appraisal cycles;

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provision of advice and training on monitoring and evaluation work for the operational divisions; and technical support to the Audit Committee.

Besides the evaluations managed by the Evaluation and Audit Unit, the operational divisions and embassies may also commission evaluations that are directly relevant to their working areas. The Unit provides advisory support to business units and programme managers in planning and undertaking such evaluations and other evaluative type of work.

Organisational Structure and Reporting Lines The Evaluation and Audit Unit is a stand-alone unit, which reports directly to the Secretary General of the Department.

The Audit Committee reports to and advises the Secretary General, and provides an independent appraisal of audit and evaluation arrangements with a view to strengthening internal controls, fraud and risk management. The members of the Committee are fully independent, and have backgrounds in audit, governance, development, and public service management. The Committee meets at least six times a year.

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The Irish Aid Independent Expert Advisory Group provides advice to the Minister on the overall orientation and strategic direction of the Irish Aid programme; it may review and comment upon evaluation reports produced by the Unit.

Central/main evaluation units

Programme/operational units

Other units with evaluation functions

Reporting line

Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

High level policy groups or ministries Lines of communication

Audit Committee

oversight

Irish Aid Programme units and embassies carry out evaluations of their own work

Evaluation and Audit Unit

Consultants carry out all central evaluations

The multi-year rolling work plan is prepared through a consultative process to identify evaluation priorities, including roles played by different actors both within and external to the Department. The plan is approved by the Secretary-General.

Types of Evaluation • Thematic evaluations • Policy/strategy evaluations • Activity/operations evaluations

The main tasks of the Unit are to manage and/or conduct evaluations of primary strategic importance to the Department. During the past five years nine ex-post evaluations, one evaluability assessment, and three other types of evaluations have been conducted.

The Unit follows the DAC’s evaluation criteria and uses coherence and complementarity as additional criteria.

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Resources

Snapshot of evaluation resources Ireland

The Unit has six full-time staff responsible for the evaluation activities. Centralised evaluations are funded through the Unit’s own budget, while decentralised evaluations are included in programme budgets.

Head / Director / Assistant Director

There has been considerable change in human resources during the past five years. Financial resources have remained largely constant during that time.

Administrative / Support staff

Principles of Evaluation Independence

Professional evaluation staff

EUR 630 000 0.13% of the ODA budget 4

Evaluations produced per year (2015)

The Evaluation and Audit Unit is independent of the operational divisions and directly reports to the Secretary General of the Department.

Ordinarily, evaluations are conducted by external independent consultants who are recruited through an open competitive tender process.

Competence and capacity building The Unit considers that professionalisation and a system of designation/credentialing would help to reinforce the internal and external legitimacy of evaluation. Four staff members have engaged in internal or external accreditation programmes. Ireland rolled out extensive training for staff to develop its capacity on results-based management and delivering results.

Transparency and participation All evaluation reports are uploaded on the Irish Aid’s website. Other relevant documents are also made available on the website with a link to social media. The dissemination of the information derived from evaluation reports is arranged in various ways such as formal workshops, briefings, or targeted distribution of reports. Press releases may also be prepared for Value-for-Money reviews and for other major evaluations.

To ensure that the findings and recommendations produced by evaluations are taken into consideration by the operational divisions, a management response will be formally documented as an action plan and published together with the evaluation. The management response states which recommendations are to be acted upon and rejected. In the case of rejection, the reasons are also clearly stated. The Audit Committee reviews completed evaluation reports and the associated management responses.

Parliamentary oversight is provided by the Committee of Public Accounts and the Joint Committee for Foreign Affairs and Trade. Irish Aid engages in dialogue with the NGO community, universities and the media. Irish Aid is also committed to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) Registry and is therefore bound to make aid data available to the public.

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Co-ordination with donors and country recipients Ireland actively seeks to undertake joint evaluations. Two joint evaluations have been carried out over the last five years with Denmark and the United Kingdom. The country also supports the capacity building in evaluation of implementing partners through training and aims to develop strong systems that bring change and results.

Quality assurance The «Evaluation Operations Manual» guides serves as guidance for evaluators on quality standards and is a useful reference guide for introducing staff to evaluation.

Note to reader: The section at the beginning of Part II entitled “Introduction and key for the member profiles” provides explanatory notes on the profiles.

EVALUATION SYSTEMS IN DEVELOPMENT CO-OPERATION: 2016 REVIEW © OECD 2016

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