Making a Difference in the Year of Evaluation
A three-part recipe for strengthening evaluation capacity
A three-part recipe for strengthening evaluation capacity
By: Caroline Heider
A three-part recipe for strengthening evaluation capacity
This is the first International Year of Evaluation. Those of you who are evaluators know all about it: thanks to EvalPartners, evaluation associations and societies at the national, regional and international level, a lot of work has already gone into preparing the many events that will take place.
It is a year to emphasize how important evaluation is to achieving development goals. Measurement and evaluation, being "right on time" to make mid-course corrections and to rethink concepts, are crucial if we are to learn from the past for a better future. This is particularly important as the world moves from the Millennium Development Goals, adopted 15 years ago, to the Sustainable Development Goals.
This year will also see a heightened call for and commitment to developing evaluation capacities in partner countries. As argued in my blog Where Will Be in 20 Years from Now, I think it's essential that we think about development processes as intrinsic to any county's development - rather than a function of aid - and that decision-makers should be empowered with evidence to make better informed decisions.
But, the year of evaluation also puts a burden on evaluation: we will need to demonstrate that we actually make a difference!
After spending more than 25 years evaluating whether development interventions achieved their objectives, I believe we should hold ourselves to the same standards, and learn those lessons so that those seeking to establish or expand their evaluation functions have a better go at it.
I have a simple recipe - with three ingredients - for making sure we do just that:
Making strategic choices: This means having clear objectives about what we are trying to influence through evidence from evaluation and, based on that, choosing to evaluate those areas that will make the biggest difference.
Evaluation methods: By continuously investing in advancing how we generate evidence we can influence policies and actions and have a greater positive effect on people, including
Sharing Knowledge: Getting smarter in using knowledge from evaluation in debates, decision-making, or design choices, creating lessons that are heard and learned, be it through better ways of packaging them, more targeted outreach to the people who matter, and getting them the right information at the right time.
Of course, all of this is only possible if we continuously invest in developing the evaluation profession. By growing the skills and knowledge of people, through experience, exchanges, as well as more formal training, we can better develop systems that track the outcomes that we achieve.
It's a rich agenda for the year - one that has benefited from the many comments we received when seeking your inputs on what should be our top priorities for the blog. By sharing how we at IEG continuously invest in making sure we make a difference, I hope that we will help those of you who are investing in creating or strengthening your evaluation capacities during this International Year of Evaluation.
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