This week, IEG released its annual report for 2016 looking back at our activities for the period July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. Our annual report is an opportunity to take stock of what we have produced and what difference that has made. 

IEG’s role is to evaluate the performance of the World Bank Group. Our insights on what has worked or not aim to inform discussions between the World Bank Group's shareholders in the Board and Senior Management. In undertaking the evaluations, we engage with operational managements and staff to foster a deeper understanding of performance and results. In all of this, our aim is to help the World Bank Group deliver better services and results to its clients.

Evaluations that matter…

During 2016, we took several important steps to position IEG’s work for greater influence and impact within the World Bank Group and the broader development community.

Our major evaluation products – at the sector, thematic, corporate, and country level – focused on some of the most critical challenges faced by the World Bank Group and its member countries. 

Key evaluations during the year looked at the World Bank Group’s role in supporting capital markets development, small states, fragility, conflict and violence prevention, electricity access, jobs and industrial competitiveness, and a number of other important areas. They were conducted to fill in knowledge gaps in the three Strategic Engagement Areas that we prioritized for current and coming years: Inclusive Growth, Sustained Service Delivery to the Poor, and Environmental Sustainability. This year’s annual report looks at our work under these three strategic engagement areas. 

At the corporate level, we assessed the Bank Group’s self-evaluation systems. It completes previous work on learning in lending, and provided deeper insights into and recommendations to solve long-standing problems with M&E, managing for results, and performance trends.  

To ensure that our evaluations indeed mattered, we also expanded our outreach efforts to various key stakeholder groups within and outside the World Bank Group. Outreach for us means getting the right information to the right people in the right format at the right time. This was particularly important in 2015, when major conferences on Finance for Development and on the UN Summit on Sustainable Development Goals warranted that we synthesize our existing evaluations to tell the larger story about issues that matter in achieving new goals. 

Much more needs to be done to deliver on these commitments, not least of all continuing to track, evaluate, and reflect on progress over the next 15 years to ensure promises are met even in the face of growing challenges. IEG is well set to do so with its ongoing and upcoming work program

Read IEG's 2016 Annual Report - Evaluations that Matter