A/RES/56/201 adopted to simplify and harmonize country assessment procedures and programming so as to reduce transaction costs and avoid additional procedural requirements and workload for recipient countries and United Nations country teams; 46. Encourages bilateral donors and the United Nations system to coordinate their efforts more actively at the field level, under the leadership of recipient Governments, inter alia, by using the common country assessment; 47. Requests the Secretary-General, in consultation with Member States, to undertake an evaluation of the progress of the common country assessment and Framework processes and their impact on the field of operational activities, as an integral part of the next triennial policy review of operational activities, and to submit a report, through the Economic and Social Council at its substantive session of 2004, on the results of such an evaluation, including lessons learned and recommendations made, for consideration by the General Assembly at its fifty-ninth session; V Evaluation of operational activities for development 48. Emphasizes the importance of the monitoring and evaluation of operational activities of the United Nations system in order to enhance their effectiveness and impact, and reiterates that the monitoring and evaluation process of operational activities, including, where appropriate, joint evaluations by the United Nations system, should be impartial and independent, under the overall leadership of the Government; 49. Reiterates the need to strengthen the capacities of the recipient countries to perform effective programme, project and financial monitoring, as well as impact evaluations of operational activities funded by the United Nations, and underlines the importance of promoting, under the leadership of Governments, greater collaboration on questions relating to evaluation among recipient Governments and the United Nations development system, in particular the members of the United Nations Development Group, at the country level; 50. Recognizes that a comprehensive and participatory approach to monitoring and evaluation calls for a closer involvement of national authorities and civil society in the monitoring and evaluation of the effectiveness and impact of operational activities, in order to ensure that the results of those evaluations are utilized to improve operational activities for development and their impact; 51. Notes that coordination activities, though beneficial, represent transaction costs that are borne by both recipient countries and the organizations of the United Nations system, and emphasizes the need for their continuous evaluation and for an analysis and assessment of costs compared with the total programme expenditures on operational activities for development in order to ensure maximum efficiency and feasibility; 52. Takes note of the impact evaluations of capacity-building and poverty eradication undertaken according to resolution 53/192, and requests the organizations of the United Nations system to review the conclusions of those evaluations and the lessons learned and to incorporate them, in the light of their own experience, into their operational activities for development; 53. Requests the Secretary-General to continue to provide, in the context of the triennial comprehensive policy review, an overall assessment of the 8