SESP
Data Owner | David Maier (david.maier@undp.org) BPPS Effectiveness |
Availability in Data Warehouse | Available |
Data Refresh Rate | Daily |
Accountability 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
Some project types are exempt from SESP. Here is the full list of project types in the Data Warehouse and whether they are eligible or exempt from SESP.
| Project Type | Eligible / Exempt |
|---|---|
DEVEF | Exempt |
DEVT | Exempt |
ENGMT | Eligible |
FCORE | Exempt |
FNONC | Exempt |
FPART | Exempt |
GLO | Eligible |
INT | Exempt |
MGMT | Exempt |
MSA | Exempt |
PROJM | Exempt |
RAF | Eligible |
RAP | Eligible |
RAS | Eligible |
REC | Eligible |
RLA | Eligible |
RMCOR | Exempt |
RMFLC | Exempt |
RMPLC | Exempt |
SSC | Eligible |
UNC | Exempt |
UNV | Exempt |
CNT | Eligible |
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 purpouses 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.
Filter out by project type: As listed in the table above.
Filter out by project status: Only "ongoing" projects should be kept.
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
Completedfor 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.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
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.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 counnts 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 | 100 |
Yellow | 80+ |
Red | <80 |
Resources
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