IAEA Technical Assistance and Co-operation Committee (TACC)
Statement by Mr Jarrod Powell, Alternate Representative of Australia to the IAEA
Agenda Item 3: Evaluation of Technical Cooperation Activities in 2021
22-23 November 2021
Thank you, Chair.
Australia thanks the Director of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) for his report. The evaluations performed by OIOS support member states’ confidence in the effective and efficient delivery of the TC Programme.
Chair,
We acknowledge OIOS’s efforts to continue its important work during the challenging situation created by the ongoing pandemic. Australia commends OIOS for its efforts in increasing the number of Country-level evaluation and audits (CLEA) to four in 2021, and its ambition to increase this number to six in 2022.
Chair,
Australia notes OIOS’s suggestion that the Agency may wish to place more focus on technical advice and capacity-building activities than on procurement, and the finding that the current process for managing TC procurements is not sustainable in the medium and longer term.
Noting the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the TC Programme, we would welcome efforts to ensure that sufficient focus is placed on technical advice, capacity building and human resource development. We would also welcome efforts to address issues relating to procurement and to ensure sustainability of the Programme.
Chair,
We strongly support the steps that have been made to promote gender equality and mainstreaming in the Agency’s work, and we welcome the recommendation of OIOS to explore a pilot initiative to help integrate a gender equality analysis into a Country Programme Framework.
Finally Chair,
We welcome the progress made in reducing the number of previous OIOS recommendations which remain open. However, we also note that there remain a number of outstanding recommendations – in particular internal audit recommendations – some of which date back nearly a decade.
Australia welcomes the transparency of OIOS reporting, and in future reports would further welcome additional detail on:
- the reasoning behind timelines established for the implementation of recommendations, and
- the progress that is being made towards implementing outstanding recommendations.
Chair,
Australia continues to strongly support the important work that is undertaken by OIOS.
Thank you.