UNEP Evaluation Office Special Study Paper No.3. Priority Setting for Evaluation: Developing a Strategic Evaluation Portfolio

Resources are scarce and best use should be made of them to deliver against the core evaluation purposes of (i) providing evidence of results to meet accountability requirements and (ii) promoting operational improvement and learning. To this end, the Evaluation Office (EO) in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has developed a method for analysing and prioritizing potential evaluations to improve the selection of a portfolio of activities that will lead to the greatest pay-off to the organization. The method establishes the relative priority of ‘evaluation opportunities' against criteria that directly relate to the primary purposes of the evaluation function