By:

Albert Byamugisha, PhDCommissioner, Monitoring and Evaluation

Office of the Prime Minister – Uganda

Presented at the Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD) Workshop 6thNovember 2015

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

1. Introduction

2. Emerging work on use of Evaluations

National M&E Policy

Government Evaluation facility

Government Performance Assessment

Citizens Demand for Accountability through Evaluation

Evaluation Capacity Development Programme

3. Conclusion and Key lessons

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Contents of Presentation

1. Introduction

Office of the Prime Minister (OPM)- Uganda has Constitutional Mandate of Coordination of the implementation of Government Programmes / Projects.

To strengthen coordination in the supply and demand of M&E in country, Sector Working Groups set up to:

Provide standards and training agenda through strengthening capacities of sectors

To further strengthen the function of evaluation and a stand alone sub-committee on evaluation set-up to give the visibility on evaluation function

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a. National M&E Policy•Passed by Cabinet in March 2013•Purpose - improve the performance of the public sector through production and use of objective information on implementation and results•Specific objectives:• Embed M&E in the management practices of sectors• Expand the coverage of public policy and programmes that are

subjected to rigorous evaluation• Strengthen coordination in the supply and demand of M&E;• Strengthen capacities of sectors to implement the policy

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2. Emerging work on use of Evaluations

b. Establishment of the Government Evaluation Facility

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Features of the FacilityDesigns, conducts, commissions, & disseminates evaluations on public policies & major public investments, as directed by Cabinet; Oversees improvements in the quality & utility of evaluations conducted across Government Has medium term rolling agenda of topics for evaluation, to be approved by Cabinet Has a virtual fund to finance public policy and investment evaluations.Has a set of standards, guidelines and database for guiding and communication evaluation findings

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C . Government Performance Assessment

Government established bi-annual Government Performance Assessments.

Government performance reports use scorecard with “Traffic Light” system to assess sectors on performance indicators against set annual targets and spending against budgets

Proceedings from the Retreats include:

the specific actions agreed upon to address issues raised and possible evaluations to be conducted

progress made against these actions is tracked and reported on at the subsequent retreat.

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d. Citizens Demand for Accountability through Evaluation

Strengthens citizen’s engagement with the state which enables them to oversee Government spending at Local Government level

It is a critical participation evaluation activity and Presidential directive in Uganda.

Government representatives present on their activities during the previous year and then the public respond with questions, queries and analysis of their own.

Help the civil and political leaders to explain to the community what Local Government does, the amount of funds received from central government and how they are spent.

Through this exercise Government leaders and implementers get to know issues that affect their citizens and take corrective measures

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e. Evaluation Capacity Development progamme

Has four components:

Information events, (populizing evaluation) Development of evaluation standards-

Evaluations should meet the standards to improve utility of findings

Continuous training courses in short and medium on evaluation

Establishment of a blended learning of Master’s course in Monitoring and evaluation at Universities

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3. Conclusion and Key lessons

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Resources committed and ring fenced for evaluations from Government Budget.

Evaluation findings disseminated at the bi-annual government performance retreat of Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and Local government representatives.

Evaluations are beginning to be viewed positively with by all stakeholders

Need to strengthen multi-sectoral collaboration to ensure that cross cutting results from evaluations are translated into use .

Evaluation Capacity development for evidence- decision making

An evaluation that is not used to inform decisions

is of little value

Morra, Imas and Rist, 2009

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Thank You!