The guidance is an important step. The updated criteria have even more easy-to-ignore demands stacked under each one. For more about the debates around their merit and usefulness, see my critical 2018 blog post series on the DAC criteria. The posts solicited many thoughtful comments from around the
Evaluative practice needs to focus on three interconnected, overlapping priorities if we want to help lead action towards a transformed world. I like to call them 'COVID-Safe', 'COVID-Ready' and 'COVID-Informed' Evaluation. COVID-Safe Evaluation: Coping in this emergency Papers, blog posts
The OECD/DAC criteria have been under review and debate since 2018. As Zenda Ofir explained in her widely discussed blog series, the criteria work when applied to relatively straightforward interventions that come with simple results chains. But they appear inadequate when we frame development as a complex adaptive system,
I argued that the DAC criteria should get due credit. As noted in Part 1 of this series, they have been useful in many ways. Most importantly, they drew our attention to important aspects that we need to consider whenever we evaluate in the development space. The DAC criteria had
Evaluation criteria used in development contexts do not only show what evaluation commissioners, evaluators and other stakeholders value. They also provide an indication of the issues that could - and likely should - be a focus in the design and implementation of development interventions (i.e., projects, programmes, policies, events, relationships such
We are sleepwalking towards irrelevance. Not because we do not do some worthwhile things. We do. But because those with power - and evaluation professionals in general - appear to be unaware or unmoved by much of what is important in the time in which we now live. We fail to evolve
Our evaluation criteria are fundamental to the credibility and utility of our evaluations. Yet we have allowed one set of criteria - the DAC criteria - to dominate the focus of our evaluations. What they become, or whether we allow this dominance to continue, really matters now that they are under revision.
In my previous post I started to make the case for the evaluation of transformative change and transformative development in a way that recognises the differences between what we call the Global South and Global North, and that then shapes our practice accordingly - including our evaluation questions and criteria. Viewing
Now that the concept of "developing" and "developed" countries is at last unfashionable, is a special focus on "development evaluation" still useful? Is the less emotive, more palatable Global South / Global North terminology more appropriate, and what does this mean for how and what
The many discussions I have recently had about the effort that is now in place to get to DAC evaluation criteria 2.0 have prompted me to write a few more posts in this series. It will also be a bridge between the earlier series and my new posts on
