Reports - United Nations Development Programme

COUNTRY EVALUATION: ASSESSMENT OF DEVELOPMENT RESULTS – TURKEY
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stakeholders to collaborate on development issues
such as the reduction of corruption, the strengthening
of the rule of law and the protection of human rights.
2) The UNDP promotes dialogue among stakeholders,
including business, civil society and Government.
The aim is that this dialogue will trigger action to
create a policy environment that supports sustainable
and broad based economic development.
3) At the local level, the UNDP supports select business
partnerships based on local priorities, such as small
business development and urban environment issues
(e.g., through the GI˚DEM programme under GAP,
see above, Section 4.A.(ii)).
One successful UNDP partnership with a private
firm is the cooperation between CISCO and the UNDP
in supporting several CISCO academies in Turkey. This
involves a university level, two-year vocational training
programme, producing networking experts. According to
the CISCO officer involved, this has been a successful
cooperation and could lead to further cooperation with
the UNDP in the Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) area.
Since Turkey has a vibrant private sector and its
continued development will be key for Turkey’s long-term
success, the UNDP is well advised to continue looking for
effective partnerships with private firms and ways to
support private sector development. However, there is a
risk that such partnership initiatives will carry the UNDP
well beyond its core areas of strategic engagement and
institutional capacity. The ADR Evaluation Team
therefore recommends that the UNDP focus its
collaboration with and support for the private sector in
the core areas of its work in Turkey, rather than adding to
its already ambitious programme.
General Conclusions for
the Governance Initiatives
In an environment in which external involvement in
institutional change at the local level has been difficult to
achieve, the UNDP has played a remarkably important
role in catalysing greater participation at the level of local
Government through its flagship LA 21 programme. It
has achieved this by maximising national ownership and
by interfering as little as possible in the mechanisms
established by local authorities and the public. It has also
resisted any involvement in the establishment of priorities
for consideration by the City Councils. This approach
has resulted in the rapid, if informal, proliferation of the
City Council mechanism as a forum for broadened
participation in decision-making. This mechanism and
the credibility gained by the UNDP in local governance
reform have positioned it for:
More active involvement in advocacy and policy
development with respect to local governance, using
LA 21 as a platform.
Better exploitation of potential spin-off projects and
programmes using the City Councils as a prioritysetting
and planning mechanism to oversee and
ensure full local ownership of project activities
undertaken by the UNDP itself or by other UN
agencies. For instance, UNICEF may wish to
consider exploring synergies between its programme
of support to street children with priorities set by
youth committees working in City Councils, and the
UNDP may wish to consider more active use of
the gender committees as a mechanism for
mainstreaming gender concerns in economic and
political development.
Building on its experience under the LA 21
programme – particularly in disadvantaged regions of
the country – in order to build institutional capacity
to more effectively utilise resources that will be
channelled through local institutions as the process of
EU accession progresses.
Developing e-systems that further increase the access
of City Councils to budgetary and revenue
information, improve the management of local
Government finances, and more effectively link the
City Councils together.
The recognition gained under the LA 21 programme
should enable the UNDP to secure cost-sharing for this
purpose. However, in order to ensure that this is the case,
the UNDP will need to improve current project and
programme monitoring and evaluation and be able to
provide much more intensive and credible substantive
support to the programmes themselves.
The UNDP’s success under the LA 21 programme
contrasts with a much less successful track record by it in
other areas of governance reform and capacity building.
First, there has been no clearly discernible strategy for
engagement in this thematic area. A number of
initiatives, which in principle could be seen as
complementary and mutually reinforcing, were started
and terminated almost at random and with little apparent
reference to each other. Second, while there have been
limited benefits to some of these initiatives, or benefits are
expected to materialise (e.g., the setting up of the HD
Centre under the TCDC programme, the e-Government