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.
This final post about the DAC criteria captures key points for consideration in the evaluation for development space. It is also relevant for the interface between humanitarian work and development - an increasingly important area of work. Refined DAC criteria, or something completely new? This question needs careful consideration. For me
Our development evaluation criteria should not be determined solely by stakeholder-determined interests, or by pragmatism resulting from constrained resources. Development of nation-states is a complicated matter. If we are serious about ensuring that evaluation plays an effective role in it, there are questions and criteria that we should
Given the good contributions of the DAC criteria noted in Part 1 of this series, let us now turn to why they need to be rethought. Based on my experience, I draw the following conclusions about requirements for evaluation criteria suitable for (sustainable) development contexts. We need a set of
The highly influential DAC evaluation criteria need to be revised. Some say reformed. What will modernised evaluation criteria for development look like? On what basis would we establish such criteria? How will we ensure that they suit different contexts, yet compel evaluation commissioners and evaluators to focus on what matters
These days we talk a lot about “sustainable development”. And about “evaluating impact”. But I continue to maintain that it is useless to evaluate the impacts of an intervention without focusing on whether such impacts have a good chance to sustain.
I do not do "development evaluation". I do not practice the evaluation OF development. I evaluate FOR development. There is a difference. These days we are told that the need for the special category called "development evaluation" has receded because all countries are actually "developing&
My last two blog posts addressed the issue of Grand Challenges in evaluation. A complementary idea: A type of 'Grand Challenge' for the profession (or perhaps rather, a smallish yet Important Challenge) is to make sure that outdated ideas die so that the field of evaluation can move
In my previous post I highlighted the notion of Grand Challenges and where they have been developed. In this post I raise issues to consider when we think about whether the evaluation profession should have its own set of Grand Challenges. Should we have Grand Challenges for Evaluation? The practice
