Independent Development Evaluation (IDEV)

IDEV carries out independent evaluations of Bank operations, policies and strategies, working across projects, sectors, themes, regions, and countries. In addition, IDEV oversees the self-evaluation of projects conducted by operations departments.

IDEV undertakes evaluations of completed projects, sector policy reviews, country assistance evaluations, business process reviews, and other studies relevant to the Bank’s policies, operations, and results.  Additionally, IDEV is also tasked with the oversight of the overall evaluation system within the Bank; the internal and external communication of evaluation findings and lessons; and the promotion of evaluation capacity development.

IDEV’s evaluations provide compelling lessons for the direction of future projects. They highlight the factors that have been shown to determine success across sectors (infrastructure or water for example), themes (e.g. poverty or health), regions (projects across borders) or countries.

Lessons learned also identify the issues that most commonly hinder outcomes and highlight the areas where specific attention in program design and implementation can produce the most positive impact.

IDEV enjoys organizational and behavioral independence; it is protected from outside influences and pressure and avoids conflicts of interest.  The Evaluator-General reports directly to the Bank’s Board of Directors through its Committee on Operations and Development Effectiveness (CODE).

CODE maintains oversight of IDEV’s work, endorses and recommends IDEV’s work program and the associated budget to the Board of Directors for approval, and ensures that the department’s budget is ‘ring fenced’ and insulated from management influence.