Evaluation Quality Assurance System (EQAS) Guidelines for Operation Evaluations.

1. In the context of renewed corporate emphasis on providing evidence and
accountability for results under the World Food Programme’s (WFP) Strategic Plan for 2014-
2017 and organisational strengthening endeavours, WFP has committed to increase the
evaluation coverage of single operations in complement to the Office of Evaluation’s (OEV)
more complex evaluations of policies, strategies, country portfolios and impact of core
activities.
2. Consequently, OEV has designed a new approach for Operation Evaluations (OpEv),
which foresees outsourcing the management and conduct of these evaluations. Long-term
agreements have been established with reputable companies for this purpose and these
guidelines, which have been designed to initiate and test this approach, are primarily
intended for them. Yet, in publishing them, the intention is also to provide transparency to
third parties: WFP colleagues, organisations and institutions affected by WFP evaluations
and users of the evaluation results.
3. These guidelines aim to clarify the quality standards for Operation Evaluations in
terms of both the evaluation process and products and to provide guidance accordingly. As
such, it deals primarily with conceptual and organisational matters rather than with the
technicalities of the evaluation research process.