Strengthening Evidence-Based Development: Five Years of Better Evaluation Practice at USAID

With the release of the Evaluation Policy in 2011, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) made an ambitious commitment to building an evaluation practice that values good planning and design, independent judgment, high quality methods and evidence-based findings for what is and is not working in USAID programs. USAID’s Evaluation Policy has served as a model for other agencies, and external organizations have credited USAID for having one of the most comprehensive policies on evaluation of any federal agency. USAID takes an ongoing learning approach to evaluation, and the Agency is continuing to improve evaluation quality and ensure that information from evaluation findings is used to inform decisions and improve programs.