Overall responsibility for development evaluation in Germany falls under the remit of the Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ). Under the direction of BMZ, other larger actors in this system are the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), the German Corporation for International Co-operation (GIZ) and the KfW Development Bank (KfW).
Within BMZ, the BMZ Evaluation Unit provides direction to the evaluation system as a whole, and has a key role as an interface between the BMZ and DEval. BMZ has largely delegated evaluation work to other actors. In the very few cases where BMZ conducts (commissions) evaluations itself, the Head of the Evaluation and Research Division reports to the State Secretary via the Director of Directorate GS2 “Data and Effectiveness”. As a Federal Ministry the BMZ does not have an independent oversight committee. It is controlled by the German Bundestag.
DEval is mandated by BMZ to independently conduct scientifically sound, strategic and policy-relevant evaluations of German development co-operation. Other tasks include evaluation capacity development and conducting research on evaluation methods and standards. The Director of DEval reports to the BMZ State Secretary and, through them, to relevant committees of the German Bundestag. The institute also reports to its own independent oversight committee – the Advisory Board.
GIZ implements German (“technical”) development co-operation, under the purview of BMZ. As part of this, its Corporate Evaluation Unit conducts organisation-specific project and strategic evaluations. The Director of the Evaluation Unit reports to the GIZ Management Board, and for project evaluations, the unit also reports to BMZ. GIZ also has a supervisory board.
Similarly, KfW is an implementing agency of BMZ (for “financial co-operation”) and conducts ex-post and impact evaluations of projects that it implements on behalf of BMZ. The Director of the Financial Co-operation Evaluation Department reports to the member of the independent Board of Supervisory Directors responsible for development cooperation. For project evaluations, KfW’s evaluation department also reports to BMZ.
Evaluation work done by civil society organisations (CSOs) complements the government’s evaluation system and are also guided by the BMZ Evaluation Policy, mentioned below.