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RE: How to Ensure Effective Utilization of Feedback and Recommendations from Evaluation Reports in Decision-Making

Ines Freier

Germany

Ines Freier

Senior consultant for NRM and biodiversity, Green economy

consultant

Posted on 29/08/2025

The organisational culture and strategic management decisions influence the uptake of recommendations.    

I mainly recommend 4-8 actions which the client can  implement in a given timeframe and ask staff what kind of recommendations they want to hear / give themselves / give other projects with the same topic.     

Some international organisations or project teams  see evaluation reports as a tool for accountability and less for learning; so giving recommendations for learning  would be  a waste of time., recommendations for data gathering  and improving the monitoring system can be given.   

 Further, recommendations which are outside the theory of change / the understanding of the evaluation object by the client / users of  evaluations, can not be given even if they are useful. One example is if a project manager of an international organisations acts like a manager of an INGO despite having a UN passport it is hard to communicate to clients  what the role of the UN in a field of action can / should be beyond implementing a one country project .  Or Environmental INGOs reinvent the wheel in promoting small green businesses being unable to take on the body of learning from organisations for SME promotion because it is outside their social network .