Speaking the Same Language within the International Organizations; A Proposal for an Enhanced Evaluation Approach to Measure and Compare Success of International Organizations

It is currently difficult for Member States to assess and compare the success or performance of UN organizations despite recent movements towards results-based approaches. Efforts in the implementation of logical frameworks have been too independent and uncoordinated and left at the discretion of agencies. This has led to different and deficient implementations of the same theoretical approach making it almost impossible to draw any conclusions. The lack of a common approach is perceptible across agencies in the diversity of evaluation standards and terminology used to describe the same concepts, the unevenness and diversity of staff training as well as in the way intentions and results are presented. The myriad of organizations with some different sort of evaluation role may be seen as an additional symptom of the lack of coordination within the UN system. The establishment of a useful and reliable evaluation process in the UN system requires three main elements: 1- a common and enhanced evaluation framework, 2- the human and organizational capacity to ensure the accurate implementation of the framework, and 3- the commitment of Member States and agencies to implement the approach. This report mainly discusses the common evaluation framework and methodological issues, although it also provides significant insight regarding how to build the human and organizational capacity of the UN to carry out this approach. Assessing the success of an organization entails the determination of three elements: mandate or mission relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency. The report provides insight into these three components of success but its primary focus is on effectiveness. Measuring effectiveness entails establishing precise targets to be reached by agencies and collecting actual results in order to assess if intended targets are being met. Indeed, assessing effectiveness encompasses comparing intentions (provided by targets) to actual achievements (collected through monitoring). The UN Secretariat itself does not provide ...