Review of the implementation of recommendations from thematic evaluations of a strategic/global nature

The review covered ten global evaluations published between 2016 and June 2020. It generated one report for each of the evaluations in addition to this synthesis report, which presents the overarching findings, conclusions and recommendations of the review.

The ten evaluations resulted in 65 recommendations with multiple sub-recommendations. Management agreed with 54 of the recommendations and partially agreed with the remaining 11. The review identified four reasons for partial agreement, which in most cases related to disagreement with a sub-recommendation: the recommendation contradicted WFP policies; the recommendation did not sufficiently consider financial or human resource constraints; the recommendation went too far in addressing the finding; or the recommendation did not fit the pragmatic nature of the organization.

The review team scored the actionability of management responses to the recommendations and sub-recommendations of each evaluation using a weighted scoring system. The responses to five of the ten evaluations met or surpassed the criteria of being fully actionable based on an assessment of the specificity, measurability, assignability and time boundness of the actions agreed in the management response.