RE: Global Impact Evaluation Forum 2025: Forging evidence partnerships for effective action

1. Bridging evidence and action:

What are the most effective ways the UN and its partners can strengthen the link between impact evaluation findings and real-time decision-making? 

The UN system requires workable processes that convert evaluation results into quick program adjustments in order to bridge the ongoing gap between evidence and prompt action, particularly in unstable situations like Ethiopia. Important steps include: 

• Establishing clear lines of authority and project scope from the start. As you pointed out, there are a lot of delays in Ethiopia (such as unclear mandates, poor planning, mismatched manpower, and training given to the wrong people) because evidence is gathered. Still, no one is responsible for putting changes into practice.
• Integrating evaluators into operations to ensure that findings are not received too late. Action can be immediately influenced by real-time evaluation teams who collaborate closely with program implementers.
• Decision dashboards that combine evaluation findings into straightforward, useful graphics for UN teams, donors, and government partners.
• brief Rapid-cycle evaluations iterative studies that allow decision-makers to make operational adjustments without having to wait for long-term studies.
• Institutional incentives, such as requiring program managers to show how evaluation results influenced their choices.
  This combination guarantees that evidence is a daily decision-making tool rather than a report on a shelf.

2. Localizing evidence:

How can impact evaluations be designed and used to better serve the localization agenda?

Localization requires programmes and evaluations to reflect local priorities, contexts, and capacities. For settings like Ethiopia, the following is essential:

• Local actors involved from design to dissemination. Local government offices, community groups, universities, and local experts must participate in defining evaluation questions.
• Building local technical capacity (e.g., training in impact evaluation, data collection, quality assurance, monitoring). Your earlier points on lack of training and misallocation of capacity in Ethiopian projects show this is critical.
• Using local data systems, not creating parallel systems for donors or UN agencies.
• Ensuring evidence elevates local realities such as staffing shortages, unplanned role assignments, unclear mandates, hidden information, and slow administrative coordination.
• Feedback loops at woreda/kebele levels so local decision-makers receive results in ways that support immediate action, not only national UN offices.

Localization becomes real when local actors lead—not just participate.

3. Supporting UN reform:

How can the impact evaluation community contribute toward coherency and cost-effectiveness in the UN system?

The humanitarian reset calls for agility, unity and cost-effectiveness. Impact evaluation can support this by:

• Harmonizing methodologies across agencies so UNICEF, WFP, UNDP, UNHCR, FAO and others produce compatible evidence. This reduces duplication and saves resources.
• Joint evaluations for joint programmes. Instead of each agency evaluating separately, one evaluation should answer shared questions.
• Mapping cost-effectiveness across interventions so UN leadership can prioritize what delivers the highest return for investment.
• Identifying structural inefficiencies, such as unclear roles, lack of manpower planning, and misaligned training—all issues you raised in Ethiopian project settings.
• Encouraging transparency across agencies by sharing data and tools.
• Linking evaluation outcomes to budgeting decisions to ensure funds go to what works.

This strengthens the coherence the UN reforms aim for.

4. Connecting evidence across the humanitarian–development–peace (HDP) nexus:

How can UN agencies and partners align evidence agendas across diverse mandates?

In fragile settings like Ethiopia’s multi-crisis environment agencies often work in parallel or even in isolation. Alignment requires:

• Shared evidence priorities at country level. UNCTs should agree on 3–5 cross-agency evaluation questions for each year, linked to humanitarian, development and peace outcomes.
• Common data platforms where all agencies upload findings, indicators and lessons.
• Nexus-sensitive evaluation designs, capturing how one sector affects another (e.g., how food security interventions reduce conflict risks; how livelihoods programming reduces aid dependency).
• Including national institutions such as ministries (Industry, Agriculture, Education, Peace) and regional bureaus to connect UN evidence to government policy pathways.
• Local context integration, such as political constraints, community dynamics, weak project planning, and coordination challenges that you described.