Global Development: Views from the Center
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March 01, 2007
A New Impact Evaluation Institution to Promote Learning for Development
Posted by Ruth Levine at 10:45 AM
"Countries know where they want to be, but they may not know the best way of getting there. We would like to see the development of a new institution which can help us generate and use impact evaluation findings and help build capacity within our country to develop evidence and answer some of our enduring questions." --Margaret Kakande, Ugandan Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development
Bellagio, Italy, may be far removed from the government offices in developing countries where policymakers seek evidence to guide large social and economic programs. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago important strides were made at the Rockefeller Foundation's conference center there toward the launching of a new entity that will promote learning for social and economic development across the globe. At a meeting convened by CGD, representatives from India, Mexico, Uganda, the UK Department for International Development, the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the African Development Bank, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation agreed to move forward with an ambitious new effort to promote and strengthen the measurement of the impact of development programs on individuals and communities. It is expected that this work will lead to the creation of the provisionally-titled "International Initiative for Impact Evaluation" (3IE), which will contribute to more high quality studies of how development programs affect poverty reduction, health and education outcomes. The design of this new independent entity will be finalized over the next several months, and other governments, development agencies, NGOs and foundations will be invited to join the initiative.
The Bellagio meeting considered and modified recommendations from The Evaluation Gap Working Group report, which identified particular gaps in the evidence available to guide policy in developing countries. The new institution developed in Bellagio is designed to address some of the reasons behind this "evaluation gap." For example, 3IE will provide flexible, just-in-time money when innovative development programs are being designed, to take best advantage of opportunities to learn about program impact. 3IE will also fund some impact evaluations, potentially on a matching basis, so that, as the Hewlett Foundation's Smita Singh says, "In five years, we can hope to see a sizeable set of resources devoted to impact assessment and fewer tradeoffs between program monies and monies for impact evaluation."
To enhance the real-world utility of impact evaluations, 3IE will engage the policy community in countries like those represented at the meeting to set priorities. It will identify opportunities for learning across countries that are facing similar types of development challenges -- for example, increasing school completion among excluded groups, preventing HIV infections, and protecting families from the financial hardship of paying for health care. 3IE will address some of the obstacles that hinder the collection of good data and the use of rigorous evaluation methods, responding to the call from India and others for an international body that can verify the quality of impact evaluations and help share findings across countries and institutions. Finally, 3IE will conduct its work in the spirit of mutual capacity-building to help ensure that learning within countries and agencies occurs in a sustainable fashion.
Creating 3IE will only solve part of the problem. Participants proposed specific provisions to assure that 3IE collaborates, coordinates and shares information with other organizations and initiatives that seek to strengthen impact evaluation work, including low- and middle-income country governments, societies of professional evaluators, and development agencies among others. DFID's Jeremy Clarke says he "sees that this approach adds value to a larger set of activities by motivating collective action to fund new studies that are coordinated across questions that are relevant to policymakers in our partner countries."
A full meeting report will be posted on our website in mid-March.
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Comments
I find it a bit concerning that this initiative seems to focus, once more, on "development" only i.e. not trade, not foreign policies and not actions undertaken by and in developed countries... I'm afraid that impacts of development policies and activities in developing countries might well be Ok yet, this may not suffice.
Posted by: Catherine Dom at March 6, 2007 09:49 AM
Yet another institution.
Please read the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness, take it seriously and stop creating new initiatives.
Posted by: Albert Brennaman at March 6, 2007 10:24 AM
The concern raised above about creating new institutions is valid, and one that we should all keep in mind as we seek to improve development practice. The 3IE discussed here, however, is truly additive. It is an initiative that will enable existing institutions and governments to make good decisions about development programs by helping them to generate relevant and rigorous evidence about the impact of those programs. Far from crowding the field further, the 3IE is one in a set of tools to help practitioners identify the most effective programs.
Posted by: Susan Nazzaro at March 6, 2007 07:03 PM
Any new institution should be located in the global south and staffed by Africans and Asians and citiszens from countires where development is done. There is a need for a structural adjustment of the development industry, particularly its knowledge production process to ensue accountability to communities and countries where "development" is done, rather than to the aid industry, that keeps expanding its bureaucracy while effectively, de-developing relevent knowledge production in the global south. My expereince of the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition (TEC), the official donor evaluation for the Asia Tsunami disaster which was heaedquarterd at ODI London indicated that evaulations without experts from the affected countries and/or continents tend to be irrelevent and in most instances very expensive white wash since consultants want the next lucrative contract. Furthermore, knowledge generated is rarely given back to the affected countries and/or communities to improve their policy process. On the TEC here were very few Asian experts, though the Asian region has extensive skills and expertise. All the meetings for the TEC evaluation framework were held outside Asia and the handful of regional experts on the TEC who are actually based in Asia could not particiapte in them. It is time that knowledge production on development, disasters and conflict shifts to the affected countries and regions. The development industry and bureaucracy increasingly runs the risk of becoming irrelevent to the poverty or conflict on the ground.
Posted by: Darini Rajasingham at March 9, 2007 12:06 PM
I think the respondents may have missed the point that this initiative aims to provide resources so that policymakers and experts in developing countries will be able initiate and conduct impact evaluations that will be helpful to them. It is not focused on the aid agencies, although the knowledge that is gained ought to guide them as well.
Posted by: Bill Savedoff at March 12, 2007 05:01 PM