SESP

Data Owner	Holly Mergler ([e-mail]) HQ/BPPS
Availability in Data Warehouse	Available
Data Refresh Rate	Daily
Values Weighted Scoring	40%

Introduction

Screening and categorization of projects are key requirements of the Social and Environmental Standards (SES).

In this regard, the objectives of UNDP's Social and Environmental Screening Procedure (SESP) are to:

• Integrate the SES Programming Principles in order to maximize social and environmental opportunities and benefits and strengthen social and environmental sustainability;

• Identify potential social and environmental risks and their significance;

• Determine the project's risk category (Low, Moderate, Substantial, High); and,

• Determine the level of social and environmental assessment and management required to address potential risks and impacts.\

Key Elements of the UNDP's Social and Environmental Standards include:

Part A: Programming Principles:

• Leave No One Behind

• Human Rights

• Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment

• Sustainability and Resilience

• Accountability

Part B: Project-Level Standards:

• Standard 1: Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Natural Resource Management

• Standard 2: Climate Change and Disaster Risks

• Standard 3: Community Health, Safety and Security

• Standard 4: Cultural Heritage

• Standard 5: Displacement and Resettlement

• Standard 6: Indigenous Peoples

• Standard 7: Labour and Working Conditions

• Standard 8: Pollution Prevention and Resource Efficiency

Part C: Social and Environmental Management System Requirements:

• Quality Assurance and Risk Management

• Screening and Categorization

• Assessment and Management

• Stakeholder Engagement and Response Mechanism

• Access to Information

• Monitoring, Reporting and Compliance

Organisational Objective

100% of eligible projects have SESP done in the same year the project started.

Data

For historical reasons, the SESP and PQA Data are stored together. Downloading the data from the UNDP Data Warehouse provides a CSV file with the following columns:

• OperatingUnit: Identifies the operational unit associated with the project, indicating the specific geographic or organizational division.

• Bureau: Specifies the bureau within the organization that oversees the project, representing a higher-level administrative grouping.

• isActive: A binary indicator (1 for active, 0 for inactive) showing whether the project is currently active. It is not clear how this particular data item is gathered, and this should be not trusted compared to the official Master Project List.

• Year: The year associated with the project's data entry, indicating when the project was either initiated or recorded in the system.

• isQA_Eligible: A binary flag (1 for yes, 0 for no) denoting whether the project is eligible for Quality Assurance (QA) processes.

• isQA_Required: Another binary flag (1 for yes, 0 for no) indicating whether the project requires QA based on specific criteria or standards.

• QA_Status: Describes the QA status of the project, such as "Exempted" or "Completed," detailing the outcome of the QA process.

• isSESP_Required: A binary indicator (1 for yes, 0 for no) showing whether the project requires Social and Environmental Standards Screening Procedures (SESP).

• SESP_Status: Reflects the current status of the SESP process for the project, with possible values like "Not Monitored," "Pending," or "Completed."

• ProjectNum_Unified: A unique identifier for each project, allowing for consistent tracking and referencing across different records or databases.

• ApprovedDate: The date and time when the project received approval, formatted as a timestamp, indicating when the project was officially sanctioned.

This data is then used to enrich the Master Project List with the isSESP_Required and SESP_Status information, and we use the ProjectNum_Unified to match the projects from this SESP dataset and the Master Project List.

Because in the SESP dataset a project appears as a row in each year it is active, if any year contains the SESP_Status "completed" we count the project has having done SESP.

Project Types

Projects are categorized as Eligible or Exempt from SESP requirements based on their type:

Code	Atlas Project Type	Current Project Type	Eligibility
CNT	Country Development Project	Development Project	Eligible
CNT	Country Projects (AWP)	Development Project	Eligible
DEVEF	Development Effectiveness	Development Effectiveness Project	Exempt
DEVT	Development Project Proposal	Project Initiation Plan	Eligible
DSERV	Development Service	Development Services Project	Eligible
ENGMT	Engagement Facility	Engagement Facility	Eligible
ENGMT	Engagement Project	Engagement Facility	Eligible
FCORE	Fully Funded by Core Resources	Development Project	Eligible
FNONC	Fully Funded by Single Donor	Development Project	Eligible
FPART	Partially Funded (Multi Donor)	Development Project	Eligible
GLO	Global Project	Development Project	Eligible
INT	Initiation Plan	Project Initiation Plan	Eligible
MGMT	Instit Effect/Mngmt Project	Institutional Effectiveness Project	Exempt
MGMT	Management Project	Management Project	Exempt
MSA	Memo for Provision of Services	Development Services Project	Exempt
MSA	Management Service Agreement	Development Services Project	Exempt
RAF	Regional Project Africa	Development Project	Eligible
RAP	Regional Project Asia Pacific	Development Project	Eligible
RAS	Regional Project Arab States	Development Project	Eligible
REC	Regional Project Europe & CIS	Development Project	Eligible
RLA	Regional Project LAC	Development Project	Eligible
SSC	Multi Country Project/SSC Proj	Development Project	Eligible
SSC	Multi Country Project/SSC Proj	Development Project	Eligible
UNC	UN Coordination	Management Project	Exempt
UNV	United Nations Volunteers	Management Project	Exempt

Project Statuses

The project statuses are defined in the Master Project List.

The statuses are:

• Financially Closed

• On Going

• Operationally Closed

• Submit for Operational Close

• Submitted for Financial close

The only project status that we consider is On Going for the purpouse of calculating the % of SESP completion for UNDP as a whole or any business unit within UNDP.

SESP Statuses

• Completed: These projects have fully met the SESP requirements, indicating successful adherence to and implementation of necessary social and environmental standards.

• Exempted: Projects that are not required to do SESP. This can be based on the project type.

• Not Monitored: Projects that by their nature do not require SESP and so are not monitored.

• Not Required: This SESP status indicates the project is exempt from the SESP process, based on project type or other criteria.

• Pending: These projects are either in the process of undergoing SESP evaluation or have not started.

Data Export

This has not yet been defined.

Raw Cleaned Data

Scoring data

• Business Unit: The name of the country office or business unit

• 3 letter ISO Code: The ISO code of the country, if applicable.

• Bureau: The Bureau of the Country Office, if applicable.

• Ongoing Projects: The number of ongoing projects within the business unit

• Projects requiring SESP: The number of ongoing projects that require SESP. This includes both the ones that have completed and are yet to complete SESP.

• Projects that have completed SESP: The number of ongoing projects that have completed SESP

• Projects that have not completed SESP: The number of ongoing projects that have not completed SESP

• % Completion Rate: The completion rate, calcuated by the number of ongoing projects that have completed SESP divided by the total number of ongoing projects, multiplied by 100.

• Traffic Light Score: Green/yellow/red:

Calculation of Scoring

The filtering below is done on the Master Project List, which has already identified unique projects.

1. Filter out by project type: As listed in the table above.

2. Filter out by project status: Only "ongoing" projects should be kept.

3. Deduplicate the SESP data: As the SESP data contains one row per project year, this leads to multiple SESP statuses for any given project**.** The way to handle this is that if a project contains the SESP Status Completed for any given year, we count the entire project as having completed SESP. In any other case, we count the project as not having done SESP.

4. Merge Master Project List with SESP Data: Using the ProjectNum_Unified in SESP Data with ATLAS_AWARD_NUMBER in Master Project List to enrich the Master Project List with the following two columns: SESP_Status and isSESP_Required
5. Further Filtering for SESP Required: Filter by projects that are marked as requiring SESP (isSESP_Required == 1), indicating they must undergo SESP processes based on predefined standards or conditions.

6. Excluding Projects Based on SESP Status: From the filtered set, we further exclude projects with an SESP status of Not Required,Exempted, Not Monitored

Calculation:

Once we have done this, we can calculate the completion rate using the following formula:

Number of Projects with Completed SESP / Number of Total Projects with Completed + Pending SESP = Completion Rate.

This calculation counts the Pending status as "incomplete'.

The Completion Rate (i.e. 75%) is then the score for this indicator.

Traffic Light System

Traffic Light	Score
Green	90-100
Yellow	80-89
Red	<80

Resources

• UNDP Social and Environmental Standards
• UNDP Social and Environmental Screening Procedure (SESP)