The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluates the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group. Our work provides evaluative evidence to help the World Bank deliver better services and results to its clients. We do so by generating lessons from past experience and accountability to shareholders and stakeholders at large.
IEG is independent of the Management of the World Bank and reports directly to the Executive Board.
Our Goals
Improving World Bank Development Results Through Excellence in Evaluation
IEG's overriding goal is to help the World Bank build on its successes and avoid unnecessarily repeating past mistakes. Our two medium-term objectives are:
To deepen the evidence about the results of the World Bank towards the achievement of its goals of accelerating poverty reduction and boosting shared prosperity. In that, we are focusing on interim targets for 2020.
To generate evidence on the early implementation experience of the World Bank Strategy to ensure shareholders and managements can make necessary mid-course corrections. By doing so, we also aim to promote a stronger internal culture for results, accountability, and learning.
What We Do
To achieve our goals, we undertake a diverse set of evaluations:
To address strategic or systemic issues,
To focus on specific countries or projects,
To ensure a systematic assessment of portfolio performance, and
To promote greater learning from IEG's work.
We are committed to continuously expanding the use of innovative evaluation methods to complement traditional approaches, including assessing outcomes against stated objectives, benchmarks, and standards.
To enhance the effectiveness of our work, we invest in systematic outreach to bring our findings and recommendations to the right stakeholders, at the right time, and in the right format.
IEG Theory of Change
IEG has developed a theory of change to clarify how evaluation contributes to the Bank's development effectiveness by fostering learning, accountability for results, and evidence-based decision-making.
Sabine Bernabè, a French-Italian-Canadian national, is the Director-General, Evaluation, for the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank effective August 1, 2023.
Sabine has over 20 years' international development experience in evaluation, policy, and research across several International Organizations and academia.
Before her current role, Sabine led and managed the Evaluation Function of the European Investment Bank (EIB) Group to develop, advocate, and deliver useful, high quality, independent evaluations that enhanced the Group's accountability and provide evidence-based lessons for better results. She fostered knowledge management and strengthened the function's analytical skills, promoted evaluation-based dialogue and exchanges with Management and the Board on issues of critical importance to the EIB Group and fostered collaborative relationships with heads of evaluation of other international organizations.
Previously Sabine worked as an economist for the World Bank, the EIB, UNDP and the University of K.U. Leuven. She led the design and implementation of a results measurement and monitoring framework for the EIB to strengthen institutional accountability and transparency. She also worked, taught and published on a range of topics including poverty, inequality, labor markets, growth and financial sector development.
Sabine earned a Ph. D from the London School of Economics and a Masters from SDA Bocconi.