IAEA TACC, Agenda Item 4 – Evaluation of Technical Cooperation Activities in 2020
As delivered by Alternate Permanent Representative Leslie Hayden
IAEA Technical Assistance and Cooperation Committee Meeting
Vienna, Austria, November 17, 2020
Madam Chair,
The United States commends the Office of Internal Oversight Services for its evaluation of Technical Cooperation activities in 2020, as contained in IAEA document GOV/2020/46. The report underscores the key role that the OIOS plays in improving the IAEA’s efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability.
We express our continued support for the OIOS’s important role of independently reviewing and evaluating the work of the IAEA. We urge the Secretariat to continue to take steps to implement the OIOS recommendations within the timeframe stipulated and to emphasize transparency and results-based management by providing additional measures for evaluation of success of IAEA projects.
We appreciate the work undertaken by the OIOS to complete three Country-Level Evaluations and Audits in Benin, Burkina Faso, and Uganda, noting that all three CLEAs emphasized a positive impact by the IAEA in its programming in these three countries. We further note with great appreciation the effort by the OIOS to synthesize the results and report on cross-cutting risks and issues from these reviews. This synthesis identified important challenges to the sustainability of these projects’ benefits that should be carefully considered by the Agency.
We welcome Agency efforts to address those common themes, and particularly note the recommendation to the Secretariat to promote realistic planning timelines and to continue to look for ways to improve the sustainability of the Agency’s work. We also take note of the OIOS recommendation to improve collaboration with other UN organizations at the country level to further expand the impact of IAEA work.
We welcome continued OIOS efforts to improve its methodologies for its reviews in 2021. We recognize the constraints that have limited the number of CLEAs this year and look forward to an increased number of CLEAs in this next TC Program cycle, if the situation permits.
With these comments, the United States takes note of this year’s OIOS Evaluation Report as contained in IAEA document GOV/2020/46.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
