The Institutional Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit (IPME) is a team situated in the Corporate Services under the Deputy Director-General. The unit's purpose is to support IUCN's strategy and programme execution at all levels. As such, it drives greater accountability, performance, assurance and overall organisational effectiveness.

As the organisation's centre of expertise and excellence on programme, portfolio and project management, strategic planning and implementation, performance management, assurance, and risk management, the unit leads on these functions from establishing normative and operational frameworks to ensuring their optimal implementation. The unit is therefore the custodian of many IUCN policies, normative/operational frameworks and guidelines. It is responsible for ensuring their relevance to institutional needs through continuous monitoring, improvements and change management. It ensures that owned policies and frameworks are appropriately implemented by monitoring their respective level of compliance, making continuous improvements, and providing direct support and capacity building to relevant IUCN staff.

The unit takes a holistic approach by addressing staff skills, mindsets, and behaviours alongside processes, methodologies and tools through the use of business analysis, solution development and monitoring and evaluation. Through the development of performance and assurance management capability, the unit assists IUCN in achieving greater impact.

IUCN is a membership Union composed of both government and civil society organisations. It harnesses the experience, resources and reach of its more than 1,300 Member organisations and the input of more than 16,000 experts. IUCN is the global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. The IUCN Secretariat has offices located all around the world and is headquartered in Gland, Switzerland.

Every four years, the IUCN membership adopts a quadrennial Programme that guides the work of the Union, especially that of the IUCN Secretariat. The Secretariat implements the IUCN Programme through a growing portfolio of over 300+ projects across the world that are designed to respond to country, donor, and IUCN priorities. For the IUCN Programme 2021-2024, IUCN intends to increase its programmatic effectiveness by mainstreaming M&E and learning across the organisation, and by ensuring inclusiveness, transparency and accountability in the delivery of its quadrennial Programme.

IUCN is looking to strengthen its capacity for monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) at the Programme-level by, amongst other things, hiring a MEL Coordinator to assist in improving IUCN’s MEL systems, practices and culture. This entails working as part of a team that will be putting in place the necessary tools, mechanisms and capacity to be able to collate results at scale, report on impacts and the use of donor funding for Programme implementation, tap into valuable lessons across the portfolio, and to have the means for continuous learning and improvement.

Under the supervision of the Head of the Programme Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation (PPME) Unit, the MEL Coordinator provides enterprise-level support to performance monitoring, evaluation, reporting and learning for IUCN’s strategic impacts and objectives.

Through analyses, management and capacity building, s/he will: (a) support the management and further improvement of IUCN’s monitoring, evaluation and learning system, (b) provide results-measurement technical support to IUCN programmes and projects; and (c) support IUCN’s corporate planning and reporting cycles.

SPECIFIC DUTIES:

• Lead and coordinate the design, implementation and upgrading of the IUCN MEL system.
- Work with the Head of PPME to revise and implement, the Monitoring and Evaluation Policy, to be in line with the delivery of the IUCN Programme and best practices.
- Initiate evaluation operational best practices, to improve IUCN practice and systems.
- Advise and contribute to MEL planning for project /programme reviews and evaluations set either by the Head of PPME, or by others IUCN units.
- Work with the Programme and Projects Portal Manager to incorporate MEL processes and tools into the Project Standards and Guidelines and the Project Management Information System.
- Establish mechanisms to optimise organizational learning and improve organizational practices for the internalisation of lessons learnt as well as build staff capacity for MEL.

• Upgrade and develop the capacity of programmatic staff to conduct monitoring, evaluation and learning activities.
- Support and train programmatic staff on MEL principles and practices, including risk management (in coordination with the Risk and Accountability Officer), with the aim of building an IUCN MEL community of practice able to design and implement industry standard evaluations and procedures.
- Update and revise the current MEL tools and templates.
- Develop materials and a replicable outreach and training programme for programmatic staff on evaluation principles and practice.
- Develop a quality control system for evaluation deliverables.
- Manage the role-out of the proposed MEL plan to be used by all programme and portfolio managers to undertake periodic evaluation and learning activities during the 2021-2024 quadrennium.

• Working with the Head of PPME, develop the incorporation of evaluation in the programmatic reporting and planning cycles.
- Propose mechanisms for linking evaluation findings and recommendations to future programme/project planning and implementation.
- In conjuction with the Project Manager, Programme and Project Portals, develop a system to conduct regular data quality audits and follow-up on compliance.
- Improve the project self-evaluation system for better learning of lessons, including capacity building of staff for application of scoring systems, conducting project score audits, and working with the Programme and Projects Portal Manager in the design of tools and guidance to improve project finalisation and closure processes.