Since 2006, the requirement has been that all evaluations must receive a Management Response (MR). In these MRs, Senior Management gives an assessment of the evaluation report and for each recommendation states whether it is accepted, partially accepted or rejected. The MR must give reasons for rejecting or partially accepting a recommendation and must indicate how, by whom and by when the accepted recommendations will be implemented.
FAO evaluation policy also mandates the preparation of a Follow-up Report (FR) one year after completion of the MR (two years for thematic/strategic evaluations submitted to the Programme Committee), in which Management reports the state of implementation of the accepted recommendations. The Office of Evaluation (OED) keeps track of deadlines for the preparation of FRs, prompts their preparation and verifies that the reports meet basic quality standards in terms of format and information. However, OED did not carry out any verification of the substantive contents of FRs so far.