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Norm 1: Internationally agreed principles, goals and targets. Within the United Nations system, it is the responsibility of evaluation managers and evaluators to uphold and promote, in their evaluation practice, the principles and values to which the United Nations is committed.
The document provides guidance on the norms and standards for evaluation in the United Nations system and beyond. It covers the general and institutional norms, as well as the associated standards, for conducting and managing evaluation practices.
The OECD has defined six evaluation criteria – relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability – and two principles for their use.
The aim is to ensure that United Nations evaluation functions provide credible and useful evidence to inform and strengthen the work of the United Nations system in pursuit of its goals. In 2005, UNEG adopted the foundational document, Norms and Standards for Evaluation in the United Nations System.
The updated 2016 UNEG Norms and Standards for Evaluation, a UNEG foundational document, is intended for application for all United Nations’ evaluations. It sets out shared principles based on good practices in managing, conducting and using evaluations.
The Evaluation Standards should serve as a reference in preparing, commissioning and performing evaluations, as well as in utilizing their results. The task of the Standards is to show how persons engaged in evaluation can ensure a process of the highest quality.
The document describes how the criteria should be used thoughtfully, and adjusted to the context of the intervention and the intended users’ needs. These revised definitions and principles for use are the result of a global consultation on the criteria and a review of how they are used in evaluation and beyond.
