The position of Director-General, Operations Evaluation (DGO), was established in 1975. To ensure impartiality, the DGO is appointed by the Executive Directors to renewable five-year terms and reports to the Board through its standing Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE), which oversees the operations evaluation system of the Bank and IFC. Upon completion of assignment, the DGO may not return to the service of the Bank. The DGO maintains contact with the Executive Directors by attending all meetings of the Board and of CODE. While the independent evaluation function reports to the Board, it is administratively linked to the President. The DGO has the rank of a Vice President and participates in senior management meetings involving Vice Presidents. The performance review of the DGO is conducted by the President.

The DGO's responsibilities are discharged, for the World Bank, through the Operations Evaluation Department (OED) and, for the IFC, through functional oversight of the IFC Operations Evaluation Group (previously, the Operations Evaluation Unit).

The DGO is directly responsible to the Executive Directors of the Bank for:

• assessing whether the Bank's programs and activities are producing the expected results;

• incorporating OED's assessments and findings into recommendations that will help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Bank's programs and activities, and their responsiveness to member countries' needs and concerns;

• appraising the Bank's operations evaluation system and reporting on its adequacy for use within the Bank and by member governments;

• encouraging and assisting member countries to develop their own operations evaluation system;

• reporting periodically on actions taken by the Bank in response to evaluation findings and presenting an overall assessment of the effectiveness of the feedback system to the Executive Directors and the President;

• cooperating with the evaluation heads of other international financial institutions and development assistance agencies.