The challenges of priority, sustainability, social acceptance, and communication are at the heart of the concerns for political decision-makers when it comes to defining and implementing health surveillance strategies. In most countries, animal health surveillance is largely based on the structural organization of veterinary services, but most often relies on informal networks that cannot be evaluated with the same tools as formalized surveillance systems. Qualitative methods combined or not with quantitative ones are essential to characterize the system processes and performances in the field and to capture the social, economic, and cultural constraints that often impact the system efficacy. Such elements are critical to ensure development and adoption of effective and adapted corrective actions by all the actors of the system. Engagement of the surveillance system actors within the evaluation process itself by the means of participatory approaches and co-development of solutions for improvement is also key to build up trust between actors from different levels (from field to national) and sectors (public and privates). Innovative methods and tools for the qualitative and quantitative evaluation of surveillance systems have been developed and largely applied in the field of animal health surveillance evaluation over the past decade.