The Role of Evaluation at the UN and in the new Sustainable Development Goals: Towards the Future We Want
| Author | Deborah Rugg |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12346 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
The Role of Evaluation at the UN and in the
new Sustainable Development Goals: Towards
the Future We Want
Deborah Rugg
United Nations
Abstract
After outlining recent developments in the United Nations system with regard to the growing role of evaluation, this article
provides an overview on how evaluation was considered in the international policy debates that took place in 2015 to shape
the new agenda, and the role evaluation should play during the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Furthermore, it outlines how efforts at the global, national and local level to
strengthen evaluation can be made more effective.
1. Introduction
Evaluation essentially answers three fundamental questions:
Are we doing the right things? Are we doing these things
right? And are we doing them on a scale that is actually
making a difference in what we are trying to achieve?
(UNEG, 2015). Evaluation is often poorly understood or con-
fused with audit, statistics, program reviews or monitoring
performance indicators. While these elements exist in vari-
ous types of evaluation, evaluation is distinct from these
other disciplines. It offers much more in-depth answers to
key decision-focused questions that policy makers and pro-
gram managers need to know.
This article is organized into three parts. It first outlines
the growing role of evaluation in the United Nations (UN)
system and the advocacy efforts responsible for it. Second,
it outlines how evaluation was considered while debating
the new agenda and role it is intended to play in the era of
the Sustainable Development Goals. Third, it outlines how
efforts to strengthen and build capacity in evaluation can
be made more effective now that the 2030 Agenda for Sus-
tainable Development is being implemented universally in
all countries around the globe.
The growing role of evaluation, as described in this article,
has serious implications for how policy is made and how
the UN and other multilateral partners’technical assistance
and governments’programs are designed in the era of the
new Sustainable Development Goals. A stronger role for
evaluation will contribute to stronger evidence-based policy
making and strengthened national government decision-
making, enhance program performance, development
impact, and the potential for stronger accountability to citi-
zens regarding national programs, policies and service effec-
tiveness. In many countries around the world, evaluation is
increasingly being seen as a right of the citizens, that is, a
right to know whether programs funded with public
resources are working, and whether program interventions
have evidence of effectiveness or not.
2. The increasing importance of evaluation at the
UN
The role of evaluation is increasingly important to the UN
global policy making processes and in its operational work
at regional and country levels. However, the capacity to con-
duct evaluations across UN agencies varies widely, as shown
in the report on the status of the evaluation function in the
UN system (JIU, 2014) and the 2015 biennial review and
scorecard on the status and capacity of evaluation in the
UN Secretariat (OIOS, 2015a). Both studies show that while
there is a belief in and an endorsement of the value of eval-
uation in the UN, much still remains to be done to improve
the function. Although the quality of evaluation reports is
noticeably improving, there is a need for strengthening writ-
ten evaluation policies, dedicated appropriate budgets (cur-
rently many UN funds and programs dedicate less than 1
per cent of program budgets to evaluation), well-trained
evaluation staff, and improving the performance of regular,
high quality evaluations. Many of the UN funds, programs
and specialized agencies have an embedded evaluation
function in which evaluators report to management, but few
have an independent evaluation function that reports
directly to an Executive Board, independent of program
management.
1
The UN Evaluation Group advocacy approach and five
year strategy
The UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) is a professional network
made up of 45 evaluation directors and heads from across
©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2016) 7:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12346
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 3 . September 2016
426
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