ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the potential and limitations of guidelines and standards as written instructions in assuring the quality of evaluation and audit practice. Guidelines and standards issued by government and professional organizations to ensure quality in judging government action may reflect this consensus. Inspectorates in various policy fields for instance are put under increasing pressure to make their quality criteria explicit in more than general terms like efficiency and effectiveness. Guidelines and standards as tools of quality assurance are designed to guarantee a certain quality level of the product of evaluation and audit as well as the process by which they are designed and executed. The World Bank adopted an approach that combines self-evaluation with independent evaluation of development operations, by project managers in the developing countries. The evaluation and audit processes are disciplined by a number of professional and good governance values.
