Innovation evaluation

Background

In order to operationalise the provisions contained in the IFAD Strategic Framework, within the overall context of the IFAD Action Plan for Improving its Development Effectiveness, the Fund developed an Innovation Strategy, approved by the Executive Board at its 91st session in September 2007. It is also important to note that prior to the aforementioned, as a means to “enhance IFAD’s capacity to promote innovations that will have a positive impact on rural poverty”, the Board approved the Initiative for Mainstreaming Innovation (IMI) at its 83rd session in December 2004. The Executive Board also approved in April 2007 a Knowledge Management Strategy, which is also important for the promotion of innovations.

In approving the OE’s work programme for 2008, the Board decided for OE to undertake a corporate-level evaluation of IFAD’s capacity to promote replicable innovations for rural poverty reduction. It also decided that the latter should assess the broader efforts of IFAD in promoting replicable innovations and include an assessment of the IMI. Moreover, as stated in the Innovation Strategy, the evaluation is expected to contribute to the implementation of the strategy.

Objectives

Before introducing the objectives of the evaluation, it is useful to underline that this is not a results and impact evaluation of the IFAD innovation strategy approved by the Board in September 2007. The strategy is currently being rolled out, and a traditional results-based evaluation would therefore not be possible at this early stage. The evaluation should however assess the relevance of the 2007 strategy and review its initial implementation progress.

This evaluation is particularly complex. On the one hand, it will assess the actual performance of the Fund on the ground in promoting replicable innovations in projects. At the same time, it will evaluate the processes and instruments at headquarters and in countries, which are crucial towards creating a favorable enabling environment to facilitate the promotion of innovations. Moreover, given that the evaluation aims to contribute to further strengthening IFAD’s work on promoting innovations, it will offer an opportunity to learn from the good practices and approaches adopted by other organizations (both public and private sector) towards promoting innovations.

More specifically, the evaluation will have two broad objectives:

• assess the performance and impact of IFAD’s innovation promotion efforts; and
• generate a series of findings and recommendations that will feed into the implementation of the Fund’s innovation strategy and related activities.

Deliverables of the evaluation

The expected deliverables of the evaluation should include the following:

Inception Phase

• An Inception report, which will be based on the approach paper elaborating on various issues.

Desk Review Phase

• Self assessment report by the IFAD management;
• Report on the review of the ongoing portfolio;
• Interview summaries will be prepared after meetings with concerned IFAD staff. An internal working paper will be prepared capturing key issues and common concerns raised by the partners interviewed;
• The benchmarking study;
• Project profiles for the 10 projects selected for in-depth case studies; and
• Building on the above deliverables, a desk review report will be prepared covering, to the extent possible, key aspects of the evaluation as well as the issues and hypothesis that require further examination during the country work phase.

Country Work Phase

• Power point presentations and case study reports. Following visits to the ten projects, power point presentation will be prepared for discussions with partners at the country level. They would contain a summary of the key findings from the field work. Thereafter, case study reports will be prepared on each project assessed, following broadly the same format.; and
• Synthesis report. A short synthesis report – extracting the cross-cutting issues from the ten case studies - will be prepared building on the findings from the field visits undertaken.

Planned schedule of the evaluation

#	Tasks	Date
1.	Distribute draft approach paper to the members of the Core Learning Partnership (CLP)	20 June 2008
2.	CLP meeting to discuss draft approach paper	4 July 2008
3.	Finalize approach paper with comments of CLP	Week of 21 July 2008
4.	Inception phase and inception report finalized	End October 2008
5.	Briefing of consultants in Rome	October 2008
6.	Start desk review phase	November 2008
7.	Self assessment by the management	March 2009
8.	Review of key IFAD documents, ongoing portfolio and interviews with IFAD staff and others in Rome	November 2008-April 2009
9.	Benchmarking study	May 2009
10.	Country visits (Individual case studies and synthesis report)	June 2009
11.	Prepare draft evaluation report	July 2009
12.	OE to review draft evaluation report	July 2009
13.	OE to distribute draft evaluation report for comments	End July 2009
14.	Roundtable stakeholders’ workshop to discuss evaluation results and build basis for the ACP	End September 2009
15.	Finalize the ACP	October 2009
16.	Transmit the full evaluation report together with executive summary and ACP to IFAD Secretary’s Office (ES)	21 October 2009
17.	Discuss the evaluation in the Evaluation Committee (EC) of the EB	December 2009
18.	Prepare EC chairperson’s report to 98th Executive Board (EB) session in December and transmit the report to the ES for editing, translation and dispatch	December 2009
19.	Discuss the evaluation in the 98th session of the EB	16-17 December 2009