This refers to the technical assistance provided by FAO to member countries in the form of development projects and programmes. These programmes/projects are funded by bilateral donors, the countries themselves, and the UN system - and also by FAO itself through the FAO Technical Cooperation Programme (TCP) and Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS). Field development projects of US$ 2 million or more are subject to individual project evaluation by an independent team. The TCP-funded projects are evaluated by the Evaluation Service with external consultants, through clusters of projects, by selected themes.

Evaluation missions are normally organized by the operating units with Evaluation Service guidance and are carried out according to FAO evaluation procedures. Besides producing evaluation reports all evaluation missions are asked to record their findings in a project evaluation questionnaire which is returned to the Evaluation Service. The reports are reviewed by the Evaluation Service, assessed for their evaluation quality and kept in the Service's records. The questionnaires results are entered in the Service's electronic database which is used to produce periodic syntheses of field evaluation reports.