Gender Responsive Budgeting and Planning Expert (Evaluation Team Member)

North America Regional Office

Development Group Cluster

The UNOPS Development Group Cluster is based in the North America Office and supports a diverse and complex portfolio including partners such as the United Nations Development Programme (the Bureau for Development Policy, the Human Development Report Office, and the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation), the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Capital Development Fund, the United Nations Secretariat and a broadening community of primarily New York-based UN partners in the delivery of project management, implementation and administration services.

In 2009 the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), together with UN Women and Belgium, launched the Gender Equitable Local Development programme (GELD). GELD advocates for gender-responsive planning, budgeting and programming at the local level, and helps ensure that development policy and public expenditures are gender-equitable. 

The objectives of the final evaluation are:

• To assist Belgium Government, UNCDF and UN Women to analyse  the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, likely impact and sustainability of the results achieved by the GELD in the five host countries (Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Senegal).
• Validate programme results in terms of achievement and/or weaknesses towards the outcomes and output at country level, with a critical examination of how/to what extent the GELD Model contributed to the creation of an enabling environment for the application of gender responsive planning and budgeting at local level in the five host countries.
• Assess the potential for sustainability of the results and feasibility of nationally/locally led replication and upscaling of the GELD Model in the 5 pilot countries. 
• To generate knowledge and identify lessons learnt, challenges faced and weakness of the programme during the pilot phase in order to inform the formulation of the Phase II of the programme.
• To assess the level of satisfaction of programme stakeholders and beneficiaries with the results of the programme;
• To determine and identify whether external factors have contributed to, or have hindered, the results of the project to date;
• To assist UNCDF and UN Women meet its accountability objectives by assessing whether GELD has achieved the development objectives it set itself at project formulation.
•  To assess whether UNCDF and UN Women have effectively used their comparative advantage and the most efficient management/operational arrangements to achieve results and ensure broader replication and up-scaling of the programme;

The GELD Final Evaluation is scheduled to take place between February and April 2013:

• Pre-mission phase: February 2013
• Mission phase:  February-March 2013
• Post-mission phase: April 2013

Programme summary:

GELD is a pilot joint programme, developed within the "One UN" principle that forges a partnership between UNCDF, UN Women and UNDP, to support local governments in five African countries to develop approaches to gender equitable development and improvement of women's access to resources and services at the local level through supporting local government in 7 districts to implement gender responsive planning, budgeting and programming. UNCDF, UN Women and UNDP have consolidated strengths and experience in supporting performance-based gender responsive planning and budgeting for local development, which can be drawn from various countries all over the world. These complementary perspectives are being brought together to generate empirical experiences on gender-equitable local development that could be replicated and up-scaled. The central objective is to construct a model that establishes linkages between planning intentions and policy outcomes in relation to achieving gender equality through equitable allocations.

The GELD programme goal is to achieve gender equitable local development (GELD) to improve women’s access to services and resources. 

The outcome to achieve this goal is that gender responsive planning, programming and budgeting through institutional reforms, engendering and strengthening funding mechanisms and reflective policy debates, will be achieved in the GELD target countries. 

The GELD programme is made up of three substantive components (a) planning and budgeting in which technical support is provided in strengthening  local government planning and budgeting applying the ‘gender-lens’ and include sex disaggregated data  and benchmarks and measures that support women’s empowerment; (b) equitable performance (systematic tracking of budget performance to ensure the realities of Local Government expenditure results in tangible benefits on gender equity. c) Knowledge generation and influencing policy, with emphasis on policy engagement, advocacy, communications and knowledge generation.

Evaluation framework and methodology:

The methodology used for the GELD Final evaluation is based on UNCDF’s core evaluation approach which involves testing the intervention logic/development hypothesis underlying a programme against evidence on its implementation performance. The evaluation will assess the coherence of the programme’s theory of change, its progress toward expected outcomes and lessons learnt to date on programme design and implementation.

UNCDF has developed a Local Development Finance (LDF) Evaluation Matrix based on the standard LDF intervention logic. The 8 key questions are organized around the UN/OECD DAC evaluation criteria of relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, likely impact and sustainability of results.

The evaluation matrix provides a clear framework for data collection, and includes a series of proposed indicators, data collection methods and sources of information for each question and sub-question which include key document analysis, structured and semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, focus group discussions, site visits, etc. This will complement the secondary data from monitoring and reporting carried out to date.

During the inception phase consultants will be asked to validate this methodology and propose alternatives to the sub-questions or data collection methods.

The methodology proposed, data collection, analysis methods and the evaluation report is intended to be gender sensitive to the extent possible.

• Ensuring the use of best practice in evaluation methodologies at all stages of the evaluation.
• Contributing to the development and pre-testing of the necessary data collection tools (to be presented in the Inception Report).
• Support the development of a list of compulsory documents to be provided by the GELD countries.
• Participating in the drafting and finalization of the evaluation report, integrating to the extent possible all comments received from different partners.
• Regularly updating the Team Leader on the progress of the evaluation.
• Ensuring quality control of his/her evaluation contributions according to UN best practice.

• Significant professional experience in both Local Development Finance and Gender Responsive Planning and Budgeting / or participatory planning and budgeting in developing countries.
• Familiarity with best practice approaches in programme evaluation and with social research methods, including qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collection and analysis.
• Excellent analytical and writing skills with proven capacity to produce well-evidenced, concise reports/studies.
• Consistently ensures timeliness and quality of work, even under pressure.
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.
• Demonstrates integrity by modelling ethical standards.

• At least 5-10 years of sound experience in the field of gender equality, local development, public administration and social policies with specific expertise on gender responsive budgeting (GRB) and public finance.
• Proven experience in government planning and budgeting processes, gender budget and planning processes. 
• Experience in participating in evaluation teams focusing on gender and local development programmes is considered an asset.
• Conceptual understanding and experience with gender mainstreaming and participatory approaches in project design and/or implementation.
• Ability to link poverty analysis with access to basic services, in an evaluation exercise.
• Technical assistance in the area of public finance management (including supporting public procurement at the local level) and provision of socio-economic infrastructure and basic services, local capacity development and in different policy and administrative aspects of decentralization.
• Experience with results-based project and programme management.
• Knowledge of UNCDF LDF approach and experience in the countries where the programme is implemented is be considered an asset.

LANGUAGE: Written and spoken English required. Working knowledge of French is essential. knowledge of Portuguese an advantage.

• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time (CET)
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• For staff positions UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a lower level than the advertised level of the post
• The incumbent is responsible to abide by security policies, administrative instructions, plans and procedures of the UN Security Management System and that of UNOPS.  
• PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR THIS VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT, IT IS MANDTORY THAT AN UPDATED CV/P11 IS UPLOADED TO YOUR APPLICATION.