LocationsWhy evaluation needs a forward view
Not just looking back
March 31, 2026
You may ask: Why do upcoming trends matter in evaluation?
The answer is that strong past results are no longer a good enough indication that a programme or strategy can continue to succeed in the future. The traditional evaluator’s logic that you continue and scale ‘what worked’, and stop or modify ‘what did not work’, no longer fully holds (if it ever did).
The word around us is in flux: The rules-based social order of the post WWII-era is evaporating; multilateralism is in crisis with national interests taking centre stage; and the UN is facing its most severe financial crisis since its founding. Many solid interventions that have been proven to ‘work’ will need to be shut down for lack of funding and political will.
Enter foresight. This young scientific discipline has over the past 50 years established an arsenal of tools and methods to ‘scan the horizon’ (do research on what lies ahead), ‘build future scenarios’ (imagine what plausible futures might look like), ‘envision’ how an organization or programme should be positioned and ‘stress-test’ the robustness of initiatives to withstand future shocks. While the foresight jargon may be off-putting at first, many of the tools are today considered essential to evaluators’ professional development and the continued relevance of the profession.
Bundling signals of change
Consider the example of signal scanning. A signal is a local disruption that has the potential to grow in scale and geographic distribution. Signal scanning tends to capture emergent phenomena sooner than traditional social science methods. Evaluation teams have started including horizon scanning for change signals into their evaluation designs. An example is shown below, depicting the outcome of two ‘Signal Studios’ with 40 professionals from across the globe, held as part of the Formative Evaluation of the UNDP Funding Windows. The evaluation used collective wisdom on how financing for development cooperation is shifting to complement a traditional literature review and to inform the context chapter of the evaluation.
Next, signals were bundled and cross-checked with more traditional evaluative factors enabling and hindering programme performance, using two foresight frameworks: trends, issues, plans, projections and obstacles (TIPPOS) and social, technological, economic, environmental, political and values-related context (STEEP-V).
As you may suspect, none of these research tools provided the evaluation with a crystal ball to see into the future. What they did provide was a systematic way to detect glimpses of larger, upcoming trends affecting the phenomenon being evaluated.
In 2026, evaluators must create their recommendations differently, more strongly considering evolving contexts and ambiguities.
Recommendations that anticipate the future
In 2026, evaluators must create their recommendations differently, more strongly considering evolving contexts and ambiguities. Senior executives increasingly call on evaluation departments to inform adaptive management, provide real-time feedback, and foster organizational learning. In this context, forward-looking evaluation recommendations should systematically consider:
- Shifting donor interests: As traditional donors are merging their development agencies with foreign ministries or trade departments, financing decisions may be based not on expected longer-term development effectiveness but short-term diplomatic gains. Before recommending adding, amplifying or scaling programmes, evaluators must understand the geopolitical objectives of major donors, and scan for synergies with the objectives of unaligned middle powers to make sure recommendations are actionable financially speaking.
- The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI): While AI opens up many opportunities for sustainable development, existing service-sector jobs are being displaced faster than new, comparable employment opportunities are created. Evaluation recommendations must keep in mind the need for income support for displaced workers and populations otherwise left behind by AI, along with training and reskilling programmes, especially for the many young people in Africa.
- Fragility and Ambiguity: Following the COVID-19 pandemic and the polycrisis that followed, development programming should assume permanent crisis conditions rather than focus on addressing temporary disruptions. Evaluation recommendations need to help prevent spillover of crises among populations, sectors and geographies by strengthening systems and solving issues at their source.
To demonstrate context-awareness and foresight, a recent Independent Country Programme Evaluation (ICPE) of UNDP’s support to Mozambique based its co-creation workshop for recommendations on a set of previously defined ‘drivers of change’:
Drivers of change identified by the UN Country Team in Mozambique and used to inform ICPE recommendations
This allowed for crafting of more specific and actionable evaluation recommendations.
Challenging recommendations in what-if worlds
Going a step further, evaluators have used scenarios – multiple narratives to represent plausible futures – to fine-tune their recommendations. The above-cited Formative Evaluation of the UNDP Funding Windows combined qualitative insights from experts with quantitative data to create imaginative narratives. Grounded in reality, scenarios encompass a range of negative to more positive options for what the future may look like; see below.
Scenarios to wind-tunnel evaluation recommendations
Scenarios help evaluators calibrate their recommendations so they can apply across a range of plausible futures. Scenarios help evaluands place themselves in their own future, make sense of recommendations and imagine their transformation journey.
The Funding Windows evaluation used a testing strategy to run recommendations through scenarios to determine their robustness. This so-called ‘wind tunnelling’ used stakeholder feedback to sharpen the recommendations while pushing those responsible for a future management response to hone in on possible actions. Stakeholder feedback for this approach was overwhelmingly positive and buy-in to the evaluation recommendations has reportedly increased as a consequence.
Seeing tomorrow today
Evaluation has been used since ancient times. Early forms of assessment in support of human decision-making processes date back to 16th century France. Throughout the centuries, evaluation has borrowed from other social sciences, developing within and across various disciplines. In the current context of volatility, international development evaluators must embrace the approaches and tools proposed by futures studies and strategic foresight. Methods are readily available, have been tried and tested, and can significantly improve the relevance of evaluation in the 21st century. By integrating futures thinking into their practice, evaluation professionals can help stakeholders not just look back but see tomorrow today.
