The Sustainable Development Goals aim for a better world by 2030 and seek to end poverty, fight inequality, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. Their implementation can be accelerated globally through evaluation, a powerful tool that improves public accountability and contributes to positive development change.

Evaluation systems and capacity gaps at the national level, however, remain a major challenge in many countries. Since 2009, the Independent Evaluation Office of UNDP (UNDP IEO) has organized biennial National Evaluation Capacities (NEC) Conferences to tackle these issues in partnership with governments and national evaluation communities.

The 2024 NEC Conference is the eighth in the series of conferences and will be co-hosted by the China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA) from 14 to 18 October 2024 in Yanqing District, Beijing, China.

The main theme of the 2024 NEC conference is “Responsive Evaluation: For Government, For Inclusion, For the Future.” This theme underscores the importance of sharing progress and lessons learned in strengthening national evaluation systems, their role in achieving the SDGs and other development goals, and how new technologies and approaches in evaluation can facilitate the achievement of these.

The 2024 NEC conference once again offers Government representatives at all levels, private sector, civil society, academia, United Nations agencies and other international organizations an opportunity to share progress, lessons, innovations, experiences, and perspectives in strengthening national monitoring and evaluation systems.

The conference will provide opportunities to enhance the skills of those commissioning, conducting, using and advocating for evaluation, while also nurturing new and existing parnerships to strengthen national evaluation systems, with an emphasis on South-South cooperation.

This year’s sessions will be organized around three intersecting strands:

• National Evaluation Systems: Building strong evaluation systems ensuring use.
• Inclusive Evaluation Systems: Including citizens’ voice, alternative knowledge, evaluating complexity.
• Future-driven Systems and Approaches: Adapting technology, innovative approaches, synthesis and knowledge management.