7 takeaways: How can evaluation shape a future-fit United Nations?

The third Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogue honoured the United Nations 80th anniversary by addressing the question: How can evaluation shape a future-fit United Nations? Experts from United Nations agencies and beyond convened to discuss the evaluation's pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness, efficiency, and agility of the United Nations amidst a complex global landscape marked by polycrises, eroding public trust, and funding challenges.

The session emphasised moving beyond evaluation as a mere "report card" to serving as an "uncomfortable mirror" for innovation and transformative organisational change. Panellists stressed the need for future-oriented evaluation methodologies, greater interagency collaboration, and a renewed focus on learning to ensure the United Nations remains relevant, effective and capable of delivering on its mandate. 

Seven quick takeaways from the dialogue

1. Embrace evaluation as an "uncomfortable mirror" for innovation: The evaluation function must serve as an independent mirror to "speak truth to power," by delivering an unbiased perspective, which, while occasionally challenging, supports leadership in making informed and strategic adaptations. While structural independence and established norms of the evaluation function protect this role, evaluation findings must be effectively communicated and packaged to inspire confidence and motivate the United Nations to pursue the innovation needed to address global challenges.

2. Strike a balance between accountability, learning, and foresight: Evaluation's role requires a fundamental realignment, balancing its emphasis on demonstrating accountability to prioritizing its function as a catalyst for systemic learning and adaptation. Future-fit evaluation must look backward with hindsight, inward with insight, and forward with foresight to guide strategic thinking and adaptive programming in an unpredictable context.

3. Future-proofing requires embracing new methodologies: To assess the agility and adaptability of the United Nations, evaluation must adopt innovative methods that look forward, not just back. This includes incorporating futures methods into mixed-methods evaluations and leveraging AI, data science, and real-time monitoring data (e.g., geospatial analysis) to achieve efficiency gains and strategic foresight, while always ensuring human judgment and ethical oversight.

4. Reposition evaluation to create space for transformative learning and adaptation in programmes: Evaluation should explicitly encourage and value innovation in programme work. Creating a safe space for candid dialogue on the evaluation findings to inform future programming builds a culture of learning. This helps staff see evaluation not as a mandatory compliance exercise, but as a tool for reflection and positive change, boosting innovation.

5. Strengthen coherence through joint and system-wide evaluation: Recognizing the interconnected nature of global challenges (e.g., health, gender, climate), interagency and joint evaluations are a vital investment for system-wide coherence and collective intelligence. These exercises strengthen the global evaluation ecosystem, enhance legitimacy, and provide a holistic view of the United Nations' contributions to complex cross-sectoral issues.

6. Measure and make visible the "intangible" impacts: The United Nations' capacity-strengthening work, which often focuses on intangible impacts like fostering trust or building government capacity, must be made visible to demonstrate value. Methodologies like Outcome Harvesting can be used intentionally, with dedicated time and well-facilitated processes, to capture and report on these non-traditional benefits, enriching the full story of the United Nations' independent contribution.

7. Institutionalize evaluation while mastering soft skills for utility: Securing a future-fit United Nations requires evaluation to operate on two essential, reinforcing pillars: institutional mandate and professional soft skills. While formal mandates (like a policy-mandated budget and governance mechanisms) provide the structural independence to speak truth to power, the utility and acceptance of findings hinge on skillful engagement. This involves mastering soft skills in stakeholder engagement and using continuous participatory approaches to ensure stakeholders own the evaluation recommendations, and willingly internalize the feedback provided by the "uncomfortable mirror".

The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse. 

The next dialogue, “Is evaluation our compass to a future free from gender-based violence?” will take place on 25 November 2025.  Learn more

This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.