Strengthening the evaluation function of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO)

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialised agency that leads international efforts to end hunger. With 195 members, the FAO works in over 150 countries around the world to promote food security and ensure regular access to high quality food sufficient to lead a healthy and active life. To promote evidence-based decision-making, the FAO Office of Evaluation (OED) conducts and supports evaluations of FAO programmes and projects to assess whether interventions are strategically aligned with the needs of the Organisation and its stakeholders.

More details 

The evaluation on the OED's overall performance in 2017-22, conducted by Lattanzio KIBS, addresses three main needs of the OED, namely 1) strengthening its learning, performance and accountability by assessing adherence to the critical principles of the OED's work, 2) providing recommendations for the implementation of the next evaluation strategy, and 3) the development of the new evaluation policy based on the OED's new Vision 2022. 

Specifically, the intervention includes the use of:

• online survey for FAO staff and external evaluators
• analysis of relevant OED documents
• focus groups and interviews with key informants: FAO staff, external partners and consultants (including food security and nutrition officials), and representatives of rural communities
• field missions to FAO headquarters in Rome and four regional offices (Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, Near East)
• Finally, the evaluation includes a workshop in Rome with key stakeholders to present the Final Evaluation Report and the Final Synthesis Report.

Project Impact 

Building on the approach used in the previous evaluation of FAO's evaluation function (conducted in 2016), Lattanzio KIBS contributes to improving adherence to the principles of independence, impartiality, credibility, transparency and usefulness of the OED's work, identifying best practices for the development of its new evaluation policy. 

Evaluation thus plays a key role, providing increasingly innovative tools to support food security around the world.