Press Release No. 15/452

Press Release: IMF Managing Director Welcomes the Independent Evaluation Office’s Report on Self-Assessment at the Fund

October 1, 2015

The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) management and staff welcome the report "Self-Evaluation at the IMF: an IEO Assessment"—which was released today by the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO). This is the first effort by the IEO to assess self-evaluation in the IMF, which the report defines as a systematic examination undertaken by staff, management, and the Executive Board of activities, programs, and policies in order to assess past performance, learn from experience, and improve the quality and effectiveness of its work.

“I welcome the report’s findings that there is considerable self-evaluation at the IMF, covering a large part of the institution’s work and that such self-evaluation is generally of high quality”, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said.

“It is reassuring that in the IEO’s view the flexible approach taken to self-evaluation to date has served the Fund for the most part relatively well, with self-evaluation integrated with the institution’s broader policy work, its lessons feeding into the design of operations, and self-evaluation outputs and practices evolving as the IMF’s work and priorities change,” she added.

While Ms. Lagarde pointed out that the report’s recommendation for a significant expansion of the scale and scope of self-evaluations in certain specific areas overlooks resource-related tradeoffs, she expressed a commitment to keep the effectiveness and scope of self-assessment procedures at the IMF under continuous review and to make adjustments as and when warranted.

“I see scope to build on the existing self-evaluation processes and infrastructure, which are reflective of the IMF’s specific characteristics and its operational imperatives, to further strengthen the self-evaluation function and better distill and disseminate lessons from self-evaluation,” she said.

See also the Managing Director’s Statement and a summary of the Executive Board Assessment.