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International Atomic Energy Agency

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is widely known as the world's "Atoms for Peace" organization within the United Nations family. Set up in 1957 as the world's centre for cooperation in the nuclear field, the Agency works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies. IAEA Headquarters are located in Vienna, Austria. In 2015, the organization had around 2,500 staff members and had an expenditure of EUR 521.5 million.

http://www.iaea.org

Evaluation Function Snapshot Independence Agenda Setting & Evaluation Planning Quality Assurance Use of Evaluation Joint Evaluation

Evaluation Function

The Programme Evaluation (PE) function is part of the Office of Internal and Oversight Services (OIOS). The Director of OIOS is also the head of the evaluation function. The evaluation policy was adopted in 2002 and updated in 2011. According to the evaluation policy, OIOS is involved in in-depth independent evaluation. At the same time, PE provides support in methodology and guidelines to programme and project manager in conducting self-evaluations.

PE has five permanent evaluation staff members (not including the Director, OIOS) with an evaluation expenditure of EUR1,100,000. The focus areas of the evaluation office are managing evaluations supported by external consultants, leadership of an evaluation team, and developing evaluation capacities within the organization.

Promoting a culture of evaluation in-house

Evaluations examine all the determinants of programme performance by assessing their relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability. The results can be used as an input for planning new programmes or strategies, as part of the IAEA’s results-based management process. Programme evaluations thus offer a key contribution to the IAEA’s continuous learning and improvement culture, facilitate the understanding of programme performance, and enhance accountability and transparency.

Snapshot

Evaluation Policy
Priorities/Competitive advantage:

o Independence

Human Resources

o Director: M

o Evaluators : Total 5 ; F=3 and M=2 (not including the Director)

o Support staff : None

o Decentralized evaluation staff : None

Evaluations produced per year by central unit and by decentralized units (where applicable)

o Nine evaluations in 2015 all of them centralized

Key resource:

o IAEA website

Independence

The evaluation office is independently located from the management structure. The head of evaluation reports directly to the Director General. S/he also controls the evaluation budget and has the authority to issue evaluation reports.

Agenda Setting & Evaluation Planning

Programme managers within IAEA are responsible for ensuring that financial resources are available for evaluations. Programme managers secure financial resources through programme and budget plan. In addition, OIOS prepares a biannual plan of evaluation through a consultative process with internal and external stakeholders. The plan depicts the timelines of evaluation activities, priority areas in need of evaluation, and resources needed, which is submitted to the Director General. The plan is not available online.

Stakeholder involvement and promoting national evaluation capacity development

Stakeholders are involved during the planning, implementation, and follow-up stages of evaluation. Although the evaluation teams are not often constituted of professionals from the concerned country, gender balanced teams are chosen whenever possible.

Quality Assurance

Quality assurance within the evaluation function is done by internal peer reviews and the official review by the head of the evaluation function (i.e. Director, OIOS).

Use of Evaluation

Findings, conclusions and binding recommendations are shared with the relevant managers through reports. All managers with responsibility for the recommendations are expected to formally state if they accept or reject the recommendations, and to present an action plan including a target date. The implementation of the recommendations is subsequently monitored until full implementation is verified, and a status report is presented each year to Member States.