2024: Independent Evaluation Group Validation of the Management Action Record
The Management Action Record (MAR) system tracks follow-up to IEG evaluations. This document validates management’s self-assessment covering FY19-23.
Learning in World Bank Lending
Brief description
This evaluation assesses the World Bank’s approach to knowledge and learning in its lending operations with the aim of supporting the Bank’s ongoing efforts to enhance its performance as a “Knowledge Bank.”
On My Mind: "When Will We Ever Learn?"
Having been in evaluation for more than 30 years, the 'broken record' is disconcerting. The reaction we often get is that we don't see anything new; my response frequently has to be: it is the mistakes that are unnecessarily being repeated that necessitate that evaluators keep flagging them. The messages will 'go away' once learning has taken place.
Self-Evaluation and Learning - Where is the Reset Button?
The World Bank began doing self-evaluations of completed loans projects 40 years ago because President McNamara wanted to know the results of the Bank’s investments. In a previous blog, co-authored with Caroline Heider, we described why there is little organizational learning flowing from the systems.
Learning from Evaluation: How can we Stay at the Top of the Game?
Why is there not more organizational learning from self-evaluation? We can list numerous proximate reasons – self-evaluations are done too late, their lessons are of the wrong type, the processes of assigning and validating ratings distract from real learning, they are based on sometimes weak evidence. But, we submit that the ultimate cause is that learning has taken a backseat to accountability.
The Role of Mentoring in Growing the Next Generation of Evaluators
In June this year, IEG won an award for having the best mentoring program in the World Bank Group.
I am so proud of this recognition because it validates the progress we have made since the inception of IEG's mentoring program in 2014.
[Getting to] Informed Solutions from the Solutions Bank
Hosted by the Independent Evaluation Group and the World Bank Group’s Vice Presidency of Learning, Leadership and Innovation
Can the World Bank get better at systematically leveraging the best evidence - from data and past experience – when shaping new development projects and programs?
IEG LIVE: [How] Does the World Bank Group Learn...from its Operations? Lessons from the Fifth Discipline
Have we (finally!) figured out how to be a learning organization? For the first in the series on “[How] Does the Bank learn from its Operations?!”
IEG’s new evaluation - “Learning and Results II” – argues for a step-change in how the Bank creates, shares, and uses knowledge from its lending operations. Peter gave us the “outside” view and complement the evaluation’s insights: Do organizations learn? Are the challenges we experience in the World Bank “normal”, or are they specific to us as an organization?
Institutionalizing Evaluation: What is the Theory of Change?
In some instances, commissioning one standalone evaluation is all that's needed. But increasingly organizations across the spectrum are following the long-standing practices of the multi-lateral development banks: they institutionalize evaluation functions. As institutions embark on establishing evaluation functions, they need to ask themselves what does success look like: what difference does the evaluation function make and how can they get the most value for the money spent on institutionalizing an evaluation function?
Facing off: Accountability and Learning - the Next Big Dichotomy in Evaluation?
It wouldn't be the first or second time that we take this route. In the 1990s we saw extensive and heated discussions about whether quantitative methods trumped qualitative ones, or the other way round. That phase was followed by a decade of debates on whether randomized control trials were the only "true" evaluation of results. A claim that was countered by evaluators committed to other evaluation methods that are more participatory and capture qualitative evidence.