Promoting Country-led Development Evaluation What is the role of donors? Hans Lundgren June 2009.

Promoting Country-led Development Evaluation

What is the role of donors?

Hans Lundgren

June 2009

Overview

• The country evaluation context• Donor role• Partnership and ownership• Evaluation capacity development • Ways forward

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The country context

• Evaluation demand related to domestic accountability needs

• The evaluation agenda in country will relate to the broader environment of governance, transparency requirements, and debate (or lack of it) on the effectiveness of public service and investments

• Aid to developing countries donor role

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How can donors support?

• Improving donor coordination and harmonisation, e.g. evaluation plan inventory

• Promoting joint and partner-led evaluation work • Supporting evaluation capacity development and

provide incentives for evaluation• Aligning with partner evaluation plans/needs and

using country systems• Sharing experience, guidance and norms

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Promoting or undermining ownership?

• Intended and unintended consequences of evaluation practice and processes

• Meeting needs of both partners and donors – not always feasible but possible more often than thought

• Partnership must move beyond passive participation ownership of evaluation agenda, design, process

• Why are there not more partner-led evaluations of donor programmes? Accountability asymmetry.

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What is evaluation capacity?

• Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD): unleashing, strengthening and maintaining evaluation capacity.

• Evaluation system: from setting the agenda to technical skills, demand for evaluation, design, feedback and learning, etc.

• 3 Levels of capacity:

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Resources

• Fact finding study on ECD (DAC/Japan, 2006)• Member and partner country experiences• Work by MDBs and UN, studies by IEG• IOCE publication “Creating and

Developing Evaluation Organisations” • DAC’s Good Practice document on

Capacity Development (2006)• UNICEF et al, “Country-led monitoring

and evaluation systems” (2008)• Evaluation tools, norms & standards

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Key emerging lessons

• An evaluation system needs to meet a country’s own learning and accountability needs.

• Donors can support, not export: capacity development processes must be country-led and tailored.

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Lessons (continued)

• Build capacity by doing joint evaluation work that meets partner (as well as donor) learning and accountability needs.

• Address supply and demand for evaluation (i.e. use by policy makers) to ensure evaluations are used

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How do we move forward?

• Change the way evaluations are planned and implemented – applying the Paris Declaration agenda to evaluation

• Explicitly consider the evaluation capacity dimension during the evaluation process

• Link with partners and find opportunities to collaborate in joint and partner-led work

• Direct and context-specific evaluation capacity development support

• Share experiences in collaborative networks

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Your comments and suggestions are welcome!

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