Developing Capacity for International Developmental Evaluation

At the IDEAS Global Assembly this past May in the beautiful island of Barbados we engaged in discussions about improving international development evaluation capacity. With colleagues Tarek Azzam, Matthew Galen and John LaVelle, we discussed multiple initiatives ranging for the use of webinars, knowledge management systems, e-learning applications, massive open online courses, opportunities to use social media to enhance national and international conferences, and a range of university-based capacity development efforts. In this brief article we describe some of those initiatives

EvalPartners:an international partnership to strengthen civil society’s evaluation capacities and promote equity

This is the second book in the series on Evaluation and Civil Society. This book is focused on case studies highlighting the experiences of regional and national VOPEs. They share their experiences in strengthening the capacities of individual evaluators to produce credible and useful evaluations, the institutional capacities of the VOPEs themselves, promoting equity-focused and gender-responsive evaluations, and, especially, the roles VOPEs are playing to improve the enabling environment for evaluation in their countries

Kris Oswalt, Executive Director, DevInfo Support Group

1. Country-led monitoring and evaluation systems are vital to national and decentralized development Since their adoption by all United Nations Member States in 2000, the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals have become a universal framework for development and a means for developing and transition countries, and their development partners, to work together in pursuit of a shared future for all. At the midpoint of 2007, between the adoption of the MDGs and the 2015 target date, the collective results suggested that there have been gains, but that much remains to be done for millions of people to realize the basic promises of the Millennium Declaration. To achieve sustainable results, country-led development strategies must be backed with adequate financing within the global partnership for development. However, this is possible only if policy-relevant and technically-reliable country-led monitoring and evaluation systems – owned by developing and transition countries – provide timely evidence to inform necessary policies and strategies to ensure progress. DevInfo: A database system designed to facilitate ownership by national authorities DevInfo is a database system which harnesses the power of advanced information technology to compile and disseminate data on human development. In particular, the system has been endorsed by th