Evaluation is an essential instrument to improve quality and effectiveness of development interventions. It produces important knowledge on development, whose aim it is to generate changes in peoples’ lives. However, evaluation systems used in practice cannot deal with the complexities of development and do not provide information about change occurring in the targeted societies. Evaluation focuses on projects, programmes or policies, but fails to provide information about societal development.
In its current form, evaluation does not look at development actors and the cumulative impact of multiple interventions. The increasing number of development actors, delivery mechanisms, fields of intervention and the increase in funding volumes has brought about a complex aid architecture. Recipient countries are under great pressure from donor requirements. Aid delivery has often been fragmented, with hundreds of requirements and conditions from donors for priorities and reporting. Evaluation does not take these problems into account but adds to the overall complexity.
Evaluations usually follow the intervention. All major donors have set up complex evaluation apparatuses to satisfy their learning and accountability needs. Conventional forms of evaluation, mandated and funded by development agencies, are now being challenged because of the influence the evaluation system, commissioners and evaluator’s interests have on the results of the evaluation. Evaluation should be conducted by the society itself and not donor-driven, and the interests of commissioners and evaluators should be included in the evaluation.
The “one-size fits all” approach of evaluation does not work. The last assessment on the implementation of the Paris Declaration states that country-specific dynamics are important in understanding development results and aid effectiveness.
The evaluation system should be carefully tailored to each country if it is to encompass societal change.
