Cordaid DAC Criteria for Evaluating Development Assistance Jobs in Ethiopia
Cordaid DAC Criteria for Evaluating Development Assistance Jobs in Ethiopia
Global Consultation on Adapting the Evaluation Criteria
In the context of a broader debate about the future of development evaluation, a discussion has begun on re-thinking the five DAC evaluation criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability, first articulated alongside evaluation principles in 1991.
Throughout 2018, the Network and its partners hosted a global consultation to explore the strengths and weaknesses of the criteria, and how they might best be adapted to today’s development context.
Our overall goal – in line with our mission – is to support better evaluation, which will in turn play a role in helping to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
The consultation ran from March to October 2018 and included:
Interviews with key stakeholders;
A consultation workshop (March 2018)
Discussions at international meetings/seminars in Asia, Africa and Europe;
Discussions within meetings of our sister networks UNEG and ECG
OECD DAC Network member survey
Public survey with stakeholders.
We received an impressive number of 691 responses to the public survey! Overall the conversations produced more than 700 pages of input. Thank you to everyone who participated!
Summary of the stakeholder consultation results.
We learned a lot during this consultation. We knew the criteria were widely used, but we were impressed by just how widely they are known and applied in evaluations.
The criteria are being used far beyond the membership of the DAC to evaluate programmes and policies outside of development co-operation, including for national and local evaluations across the globe.
While there was broad agreement on the strengths of the criteria (their simplicity, clarity and broad applicability were especially appreciated), respondents also saw room for improvement and clarification.
Many perceived challenges that were raised have to do with how the criteria are applied, more so than with the criteria themselves.
Building on these learnings, the Network decided to:
Draft updated definitions for the original criteria, including “dimensions” to further explain each criterion
Consider adding criteria
Develop a guidance on how to use the criteria
Explore what other steps are needed (beyond adaptation of the criteria) to support better evaluation in today’s context.
This work is ongoing, in close
collaboration with our members and external partners.
We will be updating this website regularly. Material from the consultation website (dacevaluationcriteria.org) will soon be available here.
In the meantime you can follow the debate on Twitter.
The criteria
When evaluating programmes and projects it is useful to consider the following criteria. The criteria were first laid out in the DAC Principles for Evaluation of Development Assistance and later defined in the Glossary of Key Terms in Evaluation and Results Based Management.
The following further explains the criteria and provides some sample questions to illustrate how they may be used in practice:
Relevance
The extent to which the aid activity is suited to the priorities and policies of the target group, recipient and donor.
A measure of the extent to which an aid activity attains its objectives.
Efficiency measures the outputs -- qualitative and quantitative -- in relation to the inputs. It is an economic term which signifies that the aid uses the least costly resources possible in order to achieve the desired results.
This generally requires comparing alternative approaches to achieving the same outputs, to see whether the most efficient process has been adopted.
The positive and negative changes produced by a development intervention, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended. This involves the main impacts and effects resulting from the activity on the local social, economic, environmental and other development indicators. The examination should be concerned with both intended and unintended results and must also include the positive and negative impact of external factors, such as changes in terms of trade and financial conditions.
Sustainability is concerned with measuring whether the benefits of an activity are likely to continue after donor funding has been withdrawn. Projects need to be environmentally as well as financially sustainable.
Sources: The DAC Principles for the Evaluation of Development Assistance, OECD (1991), Glossary of Terms Used in Evaluation, in 'Methods and Procedures in Aid Evaluation', OECD (1986), and the Glossary of Evaluation and Results Based Management (RBM) Terms, OECD (2000).
How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should apply online by 12th August 2019
For more information and job application details, see; Cordaid DAC Criteria for Evaluating Development Assistance Jobs in Ethiopia
