Growing Our Influence

The World Bank Group began evaluating projects in 1970 when President Robert McNamara created an Operations Evaluation Unit in the World Bank’s Programming and Budgeting Department. In 1973, the unit became the Operations Evaluation Department, which reported to the Board of Executive Directors and became the first independent evaluation function in an international financial institution. After evaluation offices were established in the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in 1984 and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) in 2002, the three evaluation functions were merged into the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) in July 2006. As the scope of World Bank Group operations and its portfolio of products grows, IEG continues to develop and adapt its approaches to evaluating development effectiveness. These approaches include assessing outcomes against stated objectives, benchmarks, standards, and expectations, or assessing what might have happened in the absence of the project, program, or policy. Across projects, IEG looks at the patterns of what works under what circumstances. IEG’s evaluation approach reflects and is harmonized with internationally accepted evaluation norms and principles, such as the quality standards for development evaluation of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, the good practice standards of the Evaluation Cooperation Group, and the norms and standards of the United Nations Evaluation Group.IEG adheres to a multilayered quality assurance model, which includes in-depth review of intermediate and final evaluation products by internal (IEG) and external peers. A Methods Advisory Function was established in fiscal year (FY)16 to promote internal knowledge sharing on evaluation design issues and methodological innovation. This fiscal year, the Bank Group introduced a Bank Group–wide evaluation framework, which reiterated the independence of IEG and made explicit our dual mandate of promoting accountability and fostering learning. IEG’s new Results Framework aligns with the World Bank Group’s evaluation framework and the revised IEG mandate.