Reports - United Nations Development Programme

INTRODUCTION
and recently a systematic cost-recovery policy has been
introduced to cover the costs of the UNDP for providing
these services.
In addition to creating an increased ownership by
the Government for the programmes in question, the
evaluation mission found that genuine capacity building is
also taking place through national implementation and
execution. It creates a capacity for operational project
work in the entities involved, which may be useful for
implementation of other projects funded by the
Government or by other donors in the future. While
there were also examples where a lack of ownership by the
responsible Government entity led to delays in
implementation or lack of sustainability, in general the
ADR Evaluation Team recommends that the trend for
increased national ownership is continued. When a
partnership is formed around genuine ownership, the
advantages far outweigh the risks. It is important to note,
however, that the issue of national ownership does not
have to be directly tied to national execution. National
ownership may also be achieved when the UNDP takes
direct administrative responsibility for implementation, as
discussed below as well as in Chapter 3, Section C.
(ii) Direct Execution by the UNDP
This modality has so far been used rather sparingly by the
UNDP in Turkey. While much UNDP direct support is
provided for national execution as well as for MSAs, the
fact remains that ultimate accountability for the
implementation under these modalities lies either with
the Government or with UNOPS. Part of the reason is
historic, and part is tied to the procedural constraint that
direct execution by the UNDP is only to be used in special
circumstances. However, for those programmes where
direct UNDP execution was used, it was clear to the
evaluation mission that significant benefits occurred.
In the case of alternative mechanisms, the UNDP is
required to go through other actors to put operational
activities such as contracting, procurement, payment,
recruitment etc. into practice, and can only do this directly
when it is done on behalf of others. This has a tendency
of creating an unnecessary number of layers between
funding and implementation of an activity, and the
mission became aware of several examples where this was
perceived to have led to administrative cost increases,
operational delays as well as weaknesses in monitoring
and reporting.
For the future, it appears worthwhile for the UNDP
to move towards direct execution of projects in Turkey.
While the Government and other national entities should
be closely involved with a project to ensure ownership and
capacity building, a carefully targeted, wider use of direct
execution would enable the UNDP to better serve the
Government and people of Turkey through more effective
implementation of programmes, as well as by provision of
its global knowledge services in the field of development.
(iii) Management Service Agreements (MSAs)
In Turkey, MSAs 73 have represented a significant part of
the volume of projects executed. The Government has
asked the UNDP to implement these rather large projects
because of its capacity to offer suitable and flexible
arrangements for implementation support. Most of the
MSA projects were outside the UNDP’s main thematic
focus as described by the CCFs or Country Programmes,
but from the early 1990s, the UNDP had reduced access
to funding, and was faced with the choice of either
significantly reducing office capacity, or taking on
additional tasks such as these MSAs.
An important point to note is that the MSAs have
been operated in relative isolation from the UNDP’s
overall programme, and opportunities for synergies have
been lost. The lack of links to overall programme
development efforts have prevented the use of MSArelated
capacity and experiences in new programme
development. The last MSA is now coming to an
end, with indications that neither the WB nor the
Government will initiate new arrangements, as it is not
seen as an effective contribution to Government capacity
building. One of the most important lessons learned from
more than one decade of implementing MSAs in Turkey
is that major endeavours must be integrated within the
overall programme, if the UNDP is to offer the best
possible service to its clients.
D. MONITORING AND EVALUATION
The UNDP’s system for programme and project
monitoring is based on close cooperation and distribution
of work between UNDP core staff and the management
of each project. In Turkey, responsibility for the
implementation of projects has to a large extent been
delegated to Government entities through national
execution arrangements. In some projects, a dedicated
project management has operated the project in a more or
less independent manner, while in other cases project
operations have depended on core staff of the
Government entities. In all cases, operations and
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73. MSAs are special arrangements where the UNDP in collaboration with UNOPS
provides management and operational services according to a specific formula
and legal agreement with the Government to support implementation of large
projects, in this case based on WB financed loans taken by the Government for
implementation of specific project activities.
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