By: Albert Byamugisha, PhD Commissioner, Monitoring and Evaluation Office of the Prime Minister – Uganda Presented at the Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD) Workshop 6 th November 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 2 2 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 3 3

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 Emerging work on use of Evaluations

b. Establishment of the Government Evaluation Facility 5 Features of the Facility  Designs, 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 5

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. 6 6

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 7 7

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 8

3. Conclusion and Key lessons 9 9  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, Thank You!