Results-based management in the ILO guides EVAL’s commitment to transparency, effectiveness and organizational learning. In 2005, the ILO established a central Evaluation Unit and revised its policy to conform to United Nations norms and standards for evaluation. Following an independent external evaluation (IEE) of ILO’s evaluation function in 2010 the policy was extended for another five years and strategy was adjusted to address some of the shortcomings identified. A general conclusion of the IEE was that ILO’s evaluation policy is generally sound but that a stronger link was required between evaluation and decision-making. A new five-year evaluation strategy will be formulated in the next biennium.

Since 2010, the Evaluation Unit has continued to build evaluation culture in the ILO and to pursue higher performance linked to its results-based evaluation strategy. The newly renamed unit, now called the Evaluation Office, routinely revises and updates its guidance, strengthens evaluation culture through the publishing of Think Pieces, training and undertaking annual meta-analyses on evaluation quality.

Annual reporting of the evaluation function at ILO:

The Evaluation Office has substantially expanded its reporting to the Governing Body during the November session. This year's 2013-14 collection of reports includes the following:

-- Regional cluster evaluation of Decent Work Country Programmes in North Africa

-- Independent evaluation of ILO’s strategies on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work

-- Independent evaluation of ILO strategy for coherent decent work policies

-- Meta-analysis of 15 Decent Work Country Programme Reviews

-- Decent work results of ILO employment promotion interventions: Lessons learned from evaluations, 2003-2013

Summaries of the country and strategy evaluations are available as Governing Body documents (see listing in the right menu). The full evaluation reports can be accessed through website sections on Country Programme Evaluation or Strategic Evaluation.

Every year EVAL also produces an Annual Evaluation Report (AER). The 2013-14 AER reports on the Evaluation Office progress toward achieving its result-based evaluation strategy during 2013-14 and provides oversight on the follow-up to recommendations for high-level strategy or country level evaluations, as well as centralized and decentralized project evaluations.

Scope of Evaluation in the ILO: To learn more click here

Key elements of ILO’s evaluation policy: To learn more click here

What’s new in EVAL

i-eval Resource Kit - ILO policy guidelines for results-based evaluation: Principles, rationale, planning and managing for evaluations (2^nd edition 2013)

This revised edition updates the resource kit and contains new supplemental guidance documents, protocols and useful checklists. The kit’s CD-Rom is available with a booklet and provides comprehensive online links to all relevant ILO authoritative documents related to evaluation. Click here to access the new policy guidelines.

A quick access “Links” document is available to provide a comprehensive list and link to all supplemental guidance, please click here.

As part of EVAL’s ongoing commitment to capacity building for constituents we have developed new training materials for our tripartite constituents on evaluation. The primary aim of this modular training package is to increase the evaluation capacity of our ILO constituents by improving their understanding of their role in evaluation as well as their participation. The 17 modules, containing presentations, links to documents and learning activities, can be used together for broad training or in subsets for short one or two-day workshops. The material may be downloaded here for use on a PC, or a copy of the CD-rom requested from EVAL@ilo.org.

i-eval Flash News – The evaluation newsletter

EVAL has a quarterly newsletter that offers highlights and news on evaluation activities in ILO. If you would like to subscribe to the newsletter please send us an email to register your contact information at EVAL@ilo.org.