Strengthening the social policy in the State of Mexico with the incorporation of 2030 Agenda

For the project implementation, UNDP has stablished a collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Social Development of the State of Mexico. The project was operated by the Council for the Research and Evaluation of Social Policy and the experts in evaluation of the UNDP Mexico. The Council was responsible of determining the 9 programmes that would be evaluated, while UNDP defined the working plan for the three general strategies: a) design evaluation methodology and process, b) consolidation of the integrated strategy “Familias Fuertes” and c) public servers’ capacity-building.
The programmes’ design evaluation consisted in the definition of a methodology, the dialogue with the different servers responsible of the programmes, the evaluation process and the results delivery. The methodology was mainly based on the national recommendations and reference terms for policy design evaluation. However, as the project main component is to incorporate the 2030 Agenda approach in the social policy, most of the evaluation questions were adapted to its context.
Once determined the methodology of evaluation, UNDP did a desk review process to analyse the different components of the selected programmes. In addition, the experts hold different dialogue processes with the people responsible of the programmes, in order to identify complementary information that would led to more effective evaluation. Finally, the UNDP team has elaborated one report per evaluated programme with recommendations for their strengthening.
Parallel to the definition of the methodology of the design evaluation, UNDP team worked on a methodology for the analysis of the local social integrality in the strategy “Familias Fuertes”. It consisted in the identification of specific components that would lead to have a strong family in the state and how the different interventions or programmes would have a positive impact on achieving the social and economic development of those families, without endangering the environment. After the creation of the methodology, UNDP worked side by side with the Council for the Research and Evaluation of the Social Policy in the State of Mexico in the definition of the integrated strategy and its alignment to the 2030 Agenda. The incorporation of the 2030 Agenda approach was linked in the logical framework of the strategy by considering the SDGs’ priorities, targets and indicators.
Finally for the capacity-building strategy, UNDP experts developed a Guide for the design of programmes and projects with the 2030 Agenda approach. This guide was based in the logical framework methodology and the Based-results management. Once the document was finished, UNDP experts hold a two days workshop with 50 local public servers, who are in charge of the planning and design of the social development programmes.
From the establishment of the collaboration project with the Government of the State of Mexico, UNDP defined indicators to track the results obtained in this practice, which were met in general.