The evaluation comprised two forestry projects financed by the Government of Finland. The first project, 'Development of Management Information System for the Forestry Sector in Viet Nam, Phase II' (FORMIS II), aimed to establish a fully integrated Management Information System (MIS) for forestry decision making. The second project, 'People Participation in Improvement of Forest Governance and Poverty Alleviation in Vietnam' (PFG), aimed to foster the participation of grassroots communities in the national forestry MIS to improve forest governance and contribute to poverty alleviation.

The evaluation covered the period of the FORMIS Phase II (2014-2018) and the implementation period of the PFG (2014-2018). Its objective was to assess the achieved results and impacts of FORMIS II and PFG, as well as their values and merits in the perspectives of their key stakeholders.
For FORMIS II, the evaluation focused on capacity building; information and data sharing policies and practices; IT architecture, functioning and user-friendliness of the platform, applications and database; the extent of use of the system; the contribution and impact of FORMIS project to the ongoing policy reform; and on the role of FORMIS II in supporting the transition from aid to trade between Finland and Vietnam.
Regarding PFG, the evaluation analysed in particular the extent of use of the FORMIS system by communities in the pilot areas; the appropriateness of the livelihood models selected for the pilot sites; and the contribution of the PFG to enhanced participatory forest governance in the pilot areas.