Collaborative Partner-Donor Evaluations

Description What is done in the programme or project and why, what results are pursued, who benefits from the activities and who are involved in the implementation.

At the November 2012 meeting of EvalNet, France accepted to prepare a “survey of partner countries involved in the Paris Declaration Evaluation (PDE) in order to identify opportunities to support joint partner-donor evaluations”. Collaborative partner-donor evaluation is understood as just one among many capacity-building instruments. Together with country-led evaluations it activates a series of learning-by-doing mechanisms. The project will add value to the previous international efforts at promoting joint evaluation in the sense that first, it shifts the focus from cooperation between donors to partner-donor cooperation and second, it concentrates on collaborative activities that are intended to strengthen country evaluation systems. The objectives of the study are: (1) to understand the capacity building potential of collaborative evaluation work, (2) to draw new lessons about capacity building strategies, and (3) to pave the way to a multi-annual partner-donor collaboration on evaluation work. The project consists of a series of partner country studies, each one including: (1) a review of the PDE process in terms of its contribution to building evaluation capacity; (2) the collection of positive stories of partner-donor evaluation work (in addition to PDE); and (3) an exploration of future opportunities for undertaking such work. The country studies will be prepared in an international workshop in Uganda in March 2014. The study will end in an international workshop aimed at synthesizing the country studies and proposing steps forward in Vietnam in September 2014. Altogether 18 partner countries and 15 donors or international institutions have confirmed participation in the initiative. Finland participates as a financing partner and influences the start-up of the study through membership in the management group of the initiative during the first half of 2014.