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ILO-UK Prosperity Fund Skills Programme for South East Asia (UKPFSEA) - Midterm evaluation

eval_number:

3126

eval_url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/eval/3126

lessons_learned:

themes:

theme:

Programme implementation

category:

Organizational issues

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comments:

Programme designers, project managers, project officers

challenges:

The donor in the program reserved the right to veto program steering committee decisions from donor headquarters. They also wanted to co-chair the steering committee meetings. This led to an impasse where the steering committees were not put in place.

success:

Where cooperation was already long established between ILO and the stakeholders, gaps could be informally bridged (Philippines) but the government also felt that informality was not the right way forward.

context:

In order to properly anchor any program activities in partner countries, partner country participation and leadership is central for success. The country being in the “driving seat“ is the situation which should be achieved and which also is in line with the Paris Declaration on the Effectiveness of Aid.

description:

It is an error to abstain from program steering committees for programs of sizeable budget. If the donor insists, negotiate strongly to secure this fundamentally important mechanism for achieving alignment with and committment by the recipient country institutions. Informal contacts will not be sufficient to properly bridge the resulting gaps

administrative_issues:

When negotiating and managing programs with constituents or other stakeholders, ILO staff need to ensure that Paris Declaration principles are being respected for the benefit of the program. Steering committees are long established best practices with ILO that serve this purpose. It is important that ILO staff defend this important mechanism vis-à-vis the donor‘s natural interest of oversight and budget control so as to not forfeit the effectiveness that comes with this mechanism.

url:

https://webapps.ilo.org/ievaldiscovery/lessons/244269

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location:

country:

Asia and the Pacific - regional

region:

Asia and the Pacific

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eval_title:

ILO-UK Prosperity Fund Skills Programme for South East Asia (UKPFSEA) - Midterm evaluation