New evalutaion Unit members appointed: first evaluations planned after 7 years?

The last Steering Committee for development cooperation has appointed the new 5 experts for the Evaluation Unit. According to the current legislation, the Evaluation Unit is tasked with:1) ex-ante initiatives approval before they are submitted to the Steering Committe and 2) commissioning ex-post independent impact evaluations. Due to zero financial resources allocated to the last evaluation unit activities, the Italian development cooperation did not actually carry out any independent evaluation over the last 7 years. The 2009 workplan of the newly appointed Evaluation Unit provides for 500,000 euro worth evaluations. Unfortunately, an approved plan of activity is no guarantee that these are going to be adequately resourced. In 2006, the last evaluation unit approved a 3 year plan, but no financial resources have ever be allocated to implement that.