Innovative partnership to address global gaps in monitoring and evaluation capacity

New York City, NY, January 13, 2020 – The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today marking the first step towards establishing a global partnership to support evaluation capacity development. The IEO/IEG collaboration comes at a time when the global demand for support to strengthen monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems and capacities is high. Countries need effective M&E systems and capacities in order to track the progress on their national development strategies. The support to meet this demand, while growing, is often limited by scale and a lack of coordination. As part of this new collaboration, IEO and IEG aim to pool resources, share knowledge and expertise, and leverage the comparative advantages of each institution for scaling up current initiatives and coordinating global efforts on building M&E systems and capacity.

"This collaboration comes at a pivotal moment, as the ten year countdown toward the Sustainable Development Goals begins ,” said Indran Naidoo, UNDP Director of the Independent Evaluation Office . Effective systems of monitoring and evaluation are crit ical for reaching the goals, as they allow countries to base policies on what has proven to work, and to monitor their progress to ensure no one is left behind

"No single institution has the resources to address the current global gaps in monitoring and evaluation capacity ,” said Alison Evans, World Bank Vice President and IEG Director General ."Addressing the scale of the need will require coordinated efforts by broad coalitions, and this collaboration is a step in that direction, providing a foundation that can be built on.”

Along with coordinating activities and sharing resources, the two organizations will seek to expand their collaboration globally to include the range of countries and institutions involved in developing the capacity for monitoring and evaluation.

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