Toolkit

2006 Annual Report on Operations Evaluation

The World Bank has been strengthening the results focus of its operations, that is outputs and outcomes of interventions. IEG addresses three questions in this evaluation:

1)What are the implications of the results focus for monitoring and evaluation?

2)What are the constraints and challenges to making use of this performance information at the operational level?

3)How is IEG contributing to this?

Recommendations: World Bank | IEG
Download or order the report

Overview

The Annual Report on Operations Evaluation (AROE) assesses the progress, status, and prospects for monitoring and evaluating the development effectiveness of World Bank activities. The 2006 AROE asks the question to what extent the World Bank's monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems provide staff with the information they need to better manage for results.

The AROE consists of two parts. The first focuses on the World Bank and addresses monitoring and evaluation (M&E) within the Bank. The second focuses on the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) and assesses IEG's effectiveness.

World Bank— Managing for Results

Results from Bank Staff Focus Groups

Focus Group Results >

Since 2003, the World Bank has taken a number of steps to better manage for development results, especially at the country and project levels.

Relevant policies and procedures have been updated and results frameworks have been introduced. Now, the World Bank is facing a key challenge in changing culture and perceptions within the organization, with corporate leadership and informal incentives supporting a consistent results orientation. It also needs to make more efforts to mainstream the use of results frameworks as a management tool.

Findings and Recommendations for the World Bank

Findings

Recommendations

	The World Bank has instituted policies and procedures to manage better for results.
	These have not yet translated into improved practices at the operational level.
	World Bank managers and operational staff struggle to link goals to operations.
	Performance indicators are often inadequate.
	Many staff are unclear about how to use performance information in their day-to-day work.
	World Bank culture acts as a disincentive to managing for results.

	Agree on a three-year action program to implement the next stage of the results agenda. Critical action items would be: Support task teams and provide technical advice to strengthen the use of performance information, in order to enhance countries' capacity to manage for results. Assessing the effectiveness of (self-) evaluation approaches during implementation and providing guidelines to staff on their use. Strengthening incentives for staff and providing a training and communications program for management and staff to encourage the use of M&E information. Identifying and supporting opportunities that develop and use results-based approaches.
	Supporting country directors and teams to help them use results frameworks to manage country programs and strengthening the frameworks of thematic and global programs.
	More on Recommendations >

IEG— Contributing to Results

Client Feedback on IEG Evaluations

Client Survey Results>

IEG has three functions in the Bank's results framework. First, it provides accountability by reporting independently on the results achieved by Bank operations. Second, it distills the Bank's operational experience into knowledge of "what works" and "why" and makes that knowledge widely available to the Bank and the global development community. Third, through its evaluation capacity development activities, it supports client governments on M&E. In short, IEG provides knowledge that helps Bank staff work more effectively. This report assesses how effectively IEG is fulfilling these functions.

Findings and Recommendations for IEG

Findings

	IEG has improved dissemination of its knowledge and findings. But clients want more summaries of findings and greater accessibility of reports on line.
	IEG is now paying more attention to assessing how M&E is done in projects and country programs, but it needs to intensify its efforts.
	Executive directors and their advisors consider IEG products to be highly relevant to their work and the institution and report consistent use of IEG products to inform their work. But they would like IEG reports to be more timely.
	Operational staff use IEG's finding and consider them relevant to their work but would like IEG products to be more useful for operations.

Recommendations

	To further strengthen IEG's contribution to the workings of the results agenda in the World Bank Group, IEG's should continue to follow its own results framework and monitor it through the AROE. Its focus on the usefulness of evaluation findings for its core audiences should be enhanced: for the Board for oversight, for management through the incorporation of recommendations into Bank policies and strategies, for Bank staff through the use of evaluation findings for policy advice to country partners and in project design, for external partners through the use of evaluation findings to improve their programs and policies, and for the countries more broadly. In playing this role, IEG should specifically: Improve the timeliness of its evaluations. Strengthen the operational relevance of the findings. Increase access to and exchange of the lessons.
	More on Recommendations >

Permanent URL for this page: http://go.worldbank.org/ISLC8AFQ21