The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is a unit within the World Bank Group. The head of that unit, the Director-General, Evaluation, reports directly to the Bank Group’s Board of Executive Directors and not to Bank Group management.
Evaluation of World Bank projects began in 1970 when President Robert McNamara created an Operations Evaluation Unit in the bank's Programming and Budgeting Department. In 1973 the unit was renamed the Operations Evaluation Department, and thereafter gained increasing independence from bank management. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) established an evaluation unit in 1984, and in 1995 the unit increased its independence under a new name, the Operations Evaluation Group. The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) created an evaluation office in 2002. In July 2006 the Board of the Bank Group integrated the independent evaluation functions of the World Bank, IFC, and MIGA into a single unit, the Independent Evaluation Group.
IEG supports the World Bank Group’s mission to reduce poverty by researching the extent to which World Bank projects, IFC investments, and MIGA guarantees achieve their intended results. IEG assesses whether those activities do the right things (are relevant) and whether they do them right (are effective). IEG evaluations seek to provide objective assessments to ensure that the Bank Group is accountable for achieving its development objectives. IEG is one of the 4 units (the four I's) that ensure oversight and accountability at the World Bank Group: the Inspection Panel (IPN) and the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) reporting to the Board of Executive Directors; the Internal Audit (IAD) reporting to the President and to the Audit Committee; the Integrity Vice Presidency (INT) reporting to the President.
IEG is a partner in the International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET), the Regional Centers for Learning on Evaluation and Results (CLEAR), and the Evaluation Cooperation Group (ECG).
Caroline Heider joined the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank Group as Director-General on October 1, 2011.
Famous quotes containing the words independent, evaluation and/or group:
“Women, because of their colonial relationship to men, have to fight for their own independence. This fight for our own independence will lead to the growth and development of the revolutionary movement in this country. Only the independent woman can be truly effective in the larger revolutionary struggle.”
—Women’s Liberation Workshop, Students for a Democratic Society, Radical political/social activist organization. “Liberation of Women,” in New Left Notes (July 10, 1967)
“Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)