Evaluation Policy
In April 2003, the Executive Board approved IFAD’s new Evaluation Policy. As a result, the Office of Evaluation now reports directly to the Board. The new policy set out to strengthen the effectiveness of evaluation at IFAD and draws on internationally-agreed principles for evaluation of development assistance.
As stated in the Evaluation Policy, OE’s key purpose is to promote accountability and learning in order to improve IFAD’s performance. By assessing the impact of IFAD-supported operations and policies, evaluations provide a basis for accountability. Evaluations are expected to give an accurate analysis of successes and shortcomings, ‘to tell it the way it is’. Accountability is thus a key step in a learning process that, if followed through in partnership with those who are being evaluated, deepens IFAD’s and its partners’ understanding of the causes of and solutions to rural poverty.
Every evaluation starts with an approach paper that has a standard format covering background and rationale, objectives, expected focus and outcome, the Core Learning Partnership (CLP), process and work plan, human resource requirements, and communication of results. While preparing the approach paper, OE identifies members of the CLP - the main users of the evaluation. The CLP initially helps flag issues and information sources for the evaluation. Once the evaluation report is finished, the CLP discusses the findings, helps deepen understanding of them and eventually works out the operational implications of the recommendations and the division of labour and responsibilities for their implementation.
Upon completion of each evaluation report, the CLP and other stakeholders will develop a separate action-oriented document – the Agreement at Completion Point (ACP). The ACP illustrates stakeholder understanding of the evaluation findings and recommendations, their proposals to implement them and commitment to act upon them. OE facilitates this process.
The instruments described above are embodied in IFAD’s new evaluation policy and aim to ensure transparency, accountability, and ownership of the evaluation by its users. It is important that the participatory nature of the exercise is maintained during fieldwork so that all partners play an active role and are fully consulted at all stages.
Communication of evaluation results
For an evaluation to be useful in terms of learning and to increase the impact of evaluation recommendations, we need to consider several issues:
- the very wide diversity of potential target audiences within the agency, in partner countries and among the broader development and policy communities, some of whom suffer from information overload, others who are starved of relevant information or limited by language and other communication barriers
- finding the right balance in presenting evaluation insights to avoid being too specific or too general
- integrating evaluation insights with other forms of learning, recognizing that evaluation departments do not have a monopoly on knowledge
- the barriers to learning that can exist – institutional, cultural and otherwise – which may mean that even when insights are clearly articulated and disseminated, they are not necessarily picked up or taken seriously
- taking advantage of Internet-based communication tools, without forgetting those who do not yet have access to the Internet.
The customised approach to evaluation undertaken by OE includes translating the Agreement at Completion Point into local languages (Tamil, Swahili, Portuguese or Vietnamese for example) in order to ensure as wide a dissemination of evaluation findings as possible. Reader-friendly brochures can also reach a wider audience and training modules based on key findings help increase local capacity. The Evaluation Profile is a brief two-page summary capturing the key conclusions and recommendations from each evaluation in a reader-friendly format. They have a wide audience and are particularly useful to those who simply may not have time to read even the executive summary of a full report - senior civil servants in developing countries or senior management at IFAD, for example. A Profile provides a ‘taster’ of the evaluation - an incentive to deepen understanding by referring to the main report or its executive summary.
Another relatively new OE product, is Evaluation Insights which are qualitatively different to Profiles. Also two pages long and written in the same style, Insights explore in depth one key learning point emerging from CPEs and thematic and corporate-level evaluations. Insights form the basis for further discussion among professionals and policy makers at IFAD and beyond and help direct attention to critical learning hypotheses. They provide provocative, open-ended discussion on a single topic, perhaps of strategic relevance to IFAD or concerning key issues at a policy level. Profiles and Insights are learning tools for all stakeholders and intended for a wide audience: IFAD staff in Rome and the field, IFAD's Executive Board Directors, UN and bilateral agencies, NGOs, CBOs and so on. Along with evaluation reports, Insights and Profiles are available in print and online.
