Strengthening of national evaluation systems in partner countries

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.

Development Evaluation Unit of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (EVA-11) proposes support to a joint initiative of IOCE (International Organization for Cooperation) ja EvalPartners aiming to strengthen national evaluation systems and share good practices in particular from Agenda 2030 viewpoint. Finland has previously funded projects implemented by the afore mentioned actors: The EvalPartners-initiative funded in 2013-2014 strengthened the civil society evaluation capacity by supporting national evaluation organizations (Voluntary Organisation for Professional Evaluation, VOPE) as insitutitions, enhancing their strategic role and professional evaluation capacity of members. The objective was to improve the effectiveness, equality and evidence basis of policies in developing countries. The activities strengthened the preparedness of civil society to participate in policy discussions using information based on evaluation results. The Project supported in 2015-2016 aimed at active global cooperation in evaluation, contributing at national level to the creation of enabling environment in line with the 2o16-2020 evaluation agenda. Expected results included (I) empowered evaluation organizations, with capacity to strategically drive evaluation function at national level, (II) strenghtened evaluation associations that promote the priorities of 2016-2020 global evaluation agenda by means of multi-stakeholder networks, (III) enhanced capacity of individual evaluators to carry out credible and useful evaluations, (IV) improved social marketing and network communications. Actions of EvalPartners were evaluated in 2015 and the recommendations have been put into action to a laudable degree. The current proposal includes projects that will be managed by IOCE and based on strategies that were considered successful. EvalPartners has two Flagship Programs: Program 1 promotes development of national evaluation systems and linking them to SDGs, while Program 2 promotes the importance of evaluation based evidence and links together various projects and networks that belong to EvalPartners. 2020-2021 workplan includes a.o. EvalYouth Summit, EvalGender+ webinars and EVALSDG-network exchange visit to Finland. EVA-11 proposes, that a grant of 255,200 euros from unit’s development cooperation funds be awarded for the said purposes for disbursed in 2020-2021.