Having considered the Evaluation Framework, and pursuant to the recommendation of the EFC, the Board decided to:

(a) Endorse the evaluation framework;

(b) Request that a revised version be presented to the Board at its fourteenth Meeting, incorporating the comments provided at the fourth meeting of the Ethics and Finance Committee (EFC), as well as any additional comments received from the board members by April 30, 2011;

(c) That: 

(i) In the revised versions, making a mid-term evaluation mandatory for projects that have a longer time-frame, or are above a certain dollar amount, should be considered.  That revised version should also include a clear delimitation between Mid-Term Evaluations and Mid-Term Reviews;

(ii) An overall evaluation of the Fund should be conducted, but given that only one project is currently under implementation, the date of such an evaluation would be discussed during the seventh meeting of the EFC;

(iii) The new version of the report should clearly lay out that final evaluations should be disclosed publically, taking into account sensitive issues;

(iv) The inclusion of civil society is an international best practice in evaluations and should be kept as currently presented in the Evaluation Framework and the Guidelines for Project/Programme Final Evaluations, mentioned in decision AFB.13/18 above; encouraging all evaluations to have full consultation with all relevant stakeholders; and

(d) Request the GEF Evaluation Office to continue to provide support to the secretariat regarding evaluation matters; and that the secretariat and the GEF Evaluation Office should explore different options on who would be responsible for implementing the evaluation framework. That should include the option to request the Evaluation Office to fulfill that role in the future, on a temporary basis, and those options should be detailed in the next version of the Evaluation Framework.