Foreword
Evaluation plays a vital role in improving the effectiveness and impact of development co-operation and humanitarian assistance. By providing high-quality and timely evidence on intervention processes and results, evaluations shed light on what has worked, what has not, why and for whom. Evaluation plays a critical role in organisational learning, shaping future decision making and resource allocations to improve impacts, and strengthens the transparency and accountability of development actors. Evaluative evidence also plays a role in responding to domestic demands to demonstrate the results and value for money of international aid.
However, evaluation cannot be effective without strong systems. In this context, the overall aim of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Network on Development Evaluation (EvalNet) series of evaluation systems studies is to prompt critical thinking around humanitarian and development evaluation, and to help strengthen evaluation systems of EvalNet participants and beyond.
This latest report in the series brings insights to development co-operation providers as they seek to establish or strengthen credible, fit-for-purpose evaluation systems of their own. It provides a snapshot of the core elements and ways of working of development co-operation and humanitarian assistance evaluation systems, drawing on the experiences of EvalNet members and observer organisations. It identifies major trends, covering the role of evaluation, policy and institutional arrangements, evaluation processes and the use of evaluation findings. This study covers EvalNet member countries and observers, focusing on central evaluation units. It provides profiles for DAC member countries with an established evaluation system. The research included a literature review, a survey and key informant interviews.
Chapter 1 provides an overview of the purpose, scope and methodology of the study. Chapter 2 explores the role of evaluation in development co-operation and humanitarian assistance. Chapter 3 outlines the various policy and institutional arrangements used to govern evaluation systems. Chapter 4 reviews the evaluation process, starting with how decisions are made on which evaluations to undertake. Chapter 5 focuses on how evaluation findings are used to improve development co-operation efforts. Profiles of each participant are provided in Annex C.