A history of collaboration leads to new opportunities for collaboration
“Was this initiative really effective?” — After implementing policies or initiatives, verifying their results and using that information to drive future improvements is a critical challenge for every country.
On June 18, 2026, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, we held an evaluation training session for officials from the Mongolian State Administration Agency, various ministries and agencies, the Ulaanbaatar City Government, and the 21 provinces.
The Mongolian State Administration Agency aims to use the monitoring manual developed under JICA’s Project to Strengthen Capacity for Public Investment Planning to eventually establish evaluation methods and criteria, thereby enabling the agency to independently conduct evaluations of public investment projects.
This training program was organized as part of an initiative by officials from the National Administrative Agency who participated in JICA’s topic-specific training programs to apply what they learned in practice after returning to their home country. The technical cooperation and training programs that JICA has implemented to date are evolving into opportunities for ongoing knowledge sharing and capacity building, rather than one-time events.
Participants taking diligent notes on the instructor’s explanation
Bringing Evaluation in Mongolia Closer to People’s Lives
During the training, we introduced JICA’s evaluation criteria—which are based on those of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—as well as the evaluation process and the rationale behind evaluation judgments. In addition, given that Mongolia’s system has traditionally focused on auditing, we delivered a lecture on the differences between auditing, monitoring, and evaluation—which are often confused—as well as the relationship between policy evaluation and project evaluation. During the workshop, participants discussed evaluation judgments made in actual ODA projects carried out in Mongolia. Participants asked a series of questions regarding how to utilize and disseminate evaluation results, leading to a lively exchange of opinions.
Explaining the difference between an audit and a performance evaluation
How should we measure the results of our initiatives and use them to inform future policies?
Participants asked many questions, such as “How can we use the evaluation results to improve policies?” and “How should we disseminate the evaluation results?” and a lively exchange of opinions took place during the workshop. In a post-training survey, 96% of participants responded that the session was “meaningful,” and many commented that “it was easy to understand because it linked theory with practice.”
The connections between people and organizations forged through past technical cooperation and training programs create new opportunities for learning, and that learning in turn leads to the development of institutional frameworks. JICA will continue to listen to the voices of developing countries and foster a virtuous cycle in which the outcomes of one cooperation initiative feed into the next.
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