DAC Network on
Development Evaluation
Rob D. van den Berg
Chairman
Brief history
Established by the Development
Assistance Committee of the OECD in the
early 80s
Role and mandate: to improve
development effectiveness through:
– improving evaluation practice and
encouraging standardisation
– undertaking synthesis studies
– promoting collaboration and joint work
– promoting evaluation capacity development
Current membership
Independent evaluation units of DAC
members
Observers:
– Evaluation Unit of UNDP
– Operations Evaluation Department of the
World Bank
– Evaluation Department of IMF
– Regional Development Banks
Principles
1991: DAC High Level Meeting approves
the DAC Principles of Evaluation of
Development Assistance
– Evaluation for learning and as basis for
accountability
– Organisational requirements: evaluation
policy and independence
– Criteria
– Partnership
Review of principles (1998)
Overall: no need for change
However, new trends pose challenges:
– Collaboration
– New concepts
– Independence and participation
– Learning and accountability
– Moving up and attribution
“Checking up” on application of principles
in DAC peer reviews of bilateral donors
Collaboration: leading to
harmonisation
Where donors finance together, they
should evaluate together
Increasing partnership should include
partnership in evaluation
Increasing ownership should lead to
ownership of evaluation
Recognition that we need to evaluate our
contribution to development as well as the
results of our aid
The challenge
Category
Project/activity
# of evaluations
10.000s
Programme
1.000s
Sector/thematic
1.000s
Policy/country
Joined international
Global
100s
10s
?
Synthesis report from 1998
Products (1)
Glossary of evaluation and results based
management terminology
Synthesis essays: lessons for
reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq
Synthesis of evaluations
– Participatory development and good
governance
– Support to decentralisation and local
governance
Main contribution to RBM
Translated in: Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese
Products (2)
Support for evaluation capacity
Promoting joint evaluations:
– CDF, Basic Education
– General Budget Support
– Peace Building
Harmonisation of programming of
evaluations by the Nordics plus
Support to the peer reviews of bilateral
donors
Monitoring & Evaluation
M & E often mentioned together, but they
are in fact two separate instruments
Often under M & E only M is discussed
False belief that with good monitoring
evaluation is no longer necessary
Monitoring shows whether you are “on
track” – evaluation shows whether you are
“on the right track”
M & E and results
“Results” is used for process (increased
partnership), output, outcome and impact
Monitoring can in principle take place on
all these levels
However, the contribution of aid to
development cannot be established by
monitoring, because it requires analysing
relationships
Managing for results and
evaluation
On the higher levels (outcome, impact)
evaluation plays an important role
On these levels evaluations take a lot of
time and resources
Possible solutions:
– more syntheses of existing findings
– interim products
– a strategic long term agenda for management
and evaluation
Future work
Joint evaluation on the contribution of aid to
development (as challenged by the DAC Chair)
More synthesis studies and products
Self-evaluation of the quality of bilateral
evaluations
Review of recent experiences in joint
evaluations
Partnerships with broader evaluation community