The Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) participated in the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Annual General Meeting, High-Level Panel Event and Evaluation Practice Exchange (EPE) seminar, held at UN Headquarters, New York City from 9 to 13 March, 2015, in the context of the 2015 UNEG Evaluation Week. 

The High-level Panel Event, titled "Bridge to a Better World - Evaluation at the Service of the Post-2015 Agenda" was held on 9 March to explore how building evaluation capacities can empower countries to put in place development policies and programmes which are appropriate, effective and responsive to the needs of their citizens; and, in turn, how stronger national evaluation systems can be a part of an inclusive, robust global accountability framework. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon delivered opening remarks, where he said that evaluation is not easy; nor is it popular; but it is essential.

At the UNEG Annual General Meeting, which was held from 9 to 12 March, heads of evaluation units that are members of UNEG met to review progress and results of the work programme and decided on strategies and work areas for the following years.

The Evaluation Practice Exchange seminar was held from 11 to 13 March. This is an informal forum for UNEG members to share their experiences on a range of topics. IOE  led a session on communications and knowledge management with support from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and delivered a presentation on communicating evaluations at IFAD. The session  focused on how communication and outreach functions can be fully integrated into the evaluation cycle in multilateral development agencies; and how tailored communication tools and products for different audiences (including social media) can support institutional learning and change and increase the credibility of evaluative knowledge.

At the EPE session titled "Why innovation matters for sustainable development?", IOE delivered a presentation on innovation and scaling up in IFAD's context. The aim of the session was to learn about methods and approaches used by the various agencies when evaluating and increase the understanding of innovation and its link to development.