Posted on Thursday, January 12th, 2012
“The Center for Evaluation (CEval) of Saarland University, Germany, is a globally active research institute for applied social science in the field of evaluation and member of the DeGEval (German Evaluation Society). On this occasion, we organize an international conference about “The Future of Evaluation in Modern Societies” on 14th and 15th June 2012 in Saarbruecken, Germany.
The objective of this event is to discuss the role of evaluation in societies comprehensively and on an international comparison for bringing different discussion strands together into a joint debate. For keynote speeches and lectures, we could already win numerous renowned scientists from the USA, Latin America, Africa and Europe.
Please find the detailed program and registration form on our homepage: http://futureofevaluation.ceval.de
You also find a review about our recent book “A Practioner Handbook on Evaluation” which will appeal to evaluation practitioners, policy-makers who conduct evaluations in their daily work, students training in applied research and organizations which are implementing projects and programs that could be the subject of an evaluation.
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Maria Albrecht, M.A., Center for Evaluation (CEval), Saarland University, P.O. Box 15 11 50, 66041 Saarbrücken – Germany, Fon: +49 (0)681 302-3561, Fax: +49 (0)681 302-3899, www.ceval.de
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Posted on Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
16 March 2012
The Macdonald Hotel, Birmingham
[from UKES website] UKES conferences address leading issues of the day in programme and policy evaluation. The 2012 Annual Conference will address the current drive towards evaluation focused on results – frequently linked to ‘Payment by Results’ and what, in international development and elsewhere, is familiar as ‘Results-Based Management’.
Evaluators and those who commission evaluation who advocate a focus on results reflect a legitimate concern with the productivity and efficiency of programmes and the capacity of interventions to secure gains and improvements in practice and provision. They point out that programmes should be held to account to accomplish what they were designed to do and paid for, often out of public funds. A primary focus on results seeks to emphasise main effects and outcomes that have been valued and agreed. In times of austerity and unusually scarce resources, proponents of a strong focus on results argue that emphasising value for money is socially responsible.
Others argue that an over-emphasis on measuring a programme’s results neglects important questions of how results are generated in a context, whether results capture the real quality and accomplishments of a programme, and how those results may reflect the values and ambitions of all programme stakeholders. They remind us of secondary effects and ‘unintended beneficiaries’ of programmes that may not be readily captured by results. Some also raise questions about the source of criteria over what counts as a worthwhile result given that not all programme achievements can be measured, and stakeholders may differ over a programme’s objectives.
Against this background conference participants are invited to contribute their own perspectives on the dominant issues they consider relevant to the theory and practice of evaluation in the public interest. We anticipate a lively and informative debate to stimulate professional learning and to contribute to the improvement of evaluation practice and commissioning.
Potential contributors are invited to propose discussions, seminar presentations, lectures or poster sessions which explore issues around this theme. Those issues may fall within one of the following categories – though you are invited to propose your own theme:?
- How do we define a valid ‘result’ and whose results get counted?
- How do we best measure a result – including taking account of counterfactuals?
- How do we understand where results came from, what significance they have and whether they can be replicated – i.e. what is the relation between a result and context?
- Where do benchmarks come from to measure results achievement?
- If a result is, say, a 4% improvement – how do we know whether that is a lot or a little under the circumstances?
- How do we represent the circumstances and mechanisms that give rise to a result?
- How do we account for programme accomplishments that are not represented in results?
- Is results-measurement a robust foundation for replication/extension of a programme?
A formal call for papers and proposals for sessions will be circulated shortly. The conference will be preceded on 15 March 2012 with a choice of training workshops on specialist topics.
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Posted on Thursday, October 27th, 2011
October 26, 2011 by Chris Roche.
On 19 October 2011, Oxfam Australia hosted a ‘Big Push Forward‘ event in Melbourne with the co-conveners of this initiative – Rosalind Eyben and Irene Guijt. Sixty development practitioners, including AusAid staff and academics came together to discuss whether the concerns voiced by the Big Push Forward project are relevant in Australia.
HOW RELEVANT ARE THE ISSUES TO AUSTRALIA?
Following an introduction from Rosalind and Irene, we had short inputs from three speakers on how these issues resonated in our part of the world. Dennis Altman, from the Institute of Human Security, at La Trobe University suggested that the neo-liberal language which permeates Western society has been recast in the development world. into an auditing culture, focusing on evaluation, monitoring, and counting beans. Marc Purcell the CEO of Australia’s International NGO umbrella group ACFID noted that the commitment to international aid in Australia is extremely brittle, and that the public debate about aid in Australia has led to a deep anxiety in government about how the aid programme is being perceived. But he argued that maybe it’s no bad thing for economists to look at the work of ‘pampered NGOs’. Jess Dart, the Managing Director of consulting company Clear Horizon, felt that whilst Australian NGOs do more internal evaluation than most there was a view expressed at this year’s Australasian Evaluation Conference that ‘development is the cowboy of evaluation’. If we can’t tell the story of what we’ve done, people will ask for results. There are lots of really good methods out there and we can use these to offer solid alternatives to tell more complex stories of transformation.
OZIFYING THE THEMES
(more…)
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Posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
Date: 27 October 2011
Venue: Bonn, Germany
Dear all,
For the last three years, 14 German NGOs with 40 NGOs from Asia and Africa have been working to develop tools for assessing change and its causes, in short: impact monitoring that were to be specifically relevant for NGOs. Under the name of NGO-IDEAs, tools were developed through which target groups set their own goals and monitor their achievements. NGOs and in some cases government agencies use the data generated for quantitative and qualitative assessment and reporting on outcome/impact.
Filtering according to poverty category is possible. The tools have been successfully applied in various sectors (from Saving and Credit through lactating mothers and primary schools to the inclusion of Persons with Disabilities). NGOs in East Africa, South Asia and the Philippines are now sustaining the application of the tools and spread them spontaneously to other projects and organisations. Programs have been improved through the tools and the application itself leads to more ownership and autonomy of grassroot organisations.
On Oct 27, the results of the 3-year phase will be discussed publicly. Two partners Mary Mate, Catholic Diocese of Embu; Kenya and Alma de la Paz, Kapwa Upliftment Foundation, Philippines) will present their experiences and international experts will discuss the approach. Speakers and Panel: Christiane Bögemann-Hagedorn, Head of Civil Society and Economy Department and Michaela Zintl, Head of Evaluation Department (BMZ/German Ministry for Development), Robert Chambers IDS Sussex), Cecile Kusters (Centre of Development Innovation,Wageningen), Susanne Neubert (National Opinion Research Centre at the University of Chicago, Dörte Segebart, Freie Universität, Berlin).
Publications can be downloaded from
www.ngo-ideas.net/publications. The symposium focuses on the Impact Toolbox – one of three main products of NGO-IDEAs.
Check the Impact Toolbox: http://www.ngo-ideas.net/impact_toolbox/ and
the Field Experience: http://www.ngo-ideas.net/field_experiences/
NGO-IDEAs also has an advisory role to VENRO, the German development NGO’s umbrella body. VENRO recently published a position paper “Quality before Proof” that sets “empowerment” as one of four purposes of impact observation. http://www.venro.de/evaluation.html. The symposium takes place in the wider context of this paper that has generated some discussion in Germany.
Kind regards
Bernward Causemann/NGO-IDEAs
–
Bernward Causemann, www.causemann.org
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Posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011
Venue: University of Copenhagen
Date: May 21-23, 2012
Invitation and Call for Papers to International Workshop
Centre for Social Science Development Research
The Evaluation Department of the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Centre for Social Science Development Research at Institute of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen are pleased to invite you to submit an abstract (preparatory to a full paper) to an International Workshop, which will focus on methodological and practical considerations when using case studies in evaluations of development. The workshop will be organised in collaboration with the journal Evaluation:the international journal of theory, research and practice.
A large number of development evaluations are broader, learning-oriented evaluations based on cases at country, sector or project level. A key challenge in these evaluations is how to deal with the question of external validity. Within the field of development evaluation the methodological and practical debate on how to address this issue has been relatively limited.
The Organising Committee of the International Workshop is seeking abstracts that address theoretical/methodological challenges as well as more practical experiences when using case studies in learning-oriented development evaluations. Abstracts could e.g. focus on: (more…)
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Posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011
Date: 17-18 October 2011
Venue: ANU, Canberra, Australia
Concept Note, Chris Roche & Linda Kelly, 4 August 2011
The Developmental Leadership Program (DLP)[1] addresses an important gap in international thinking and policy about the critical role played by leaders, elites and coalitions in the politics of development. At the core of DLP thinking is the proposition that political processes shape developmental outcomes at all levels and in all aspects of society: at national and sub-national levels and in all sectors and issue areas.
Initial findings of the DLP research program confirm that development is a political process and that leadership and agency matter. This is of course not new, but the DLP research provides important insights into how, in particular, leadership, elites and formal and informal coalitions can play a particularly important and under-recognized role in institutional formation (or establishing the ‘rules of the game’), policy reform and development processes[2].
International aid therefore needs to engage effectively with political processes. It needs to be flexible and be able to respond when opportunities open up. It needs to avoid the danger of bolstering harmful political settlements.
Furthermore Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) mechanisms need to be improved and made compatible with flexible programming and recognize the importance of ‘process’ as well as outcomes. Donors should invest in a range of monitoring and evaluation techniques and approaches which are more aligned with the kinds of non-linear and unpredictable processes which characterise the kinds of political processes which drive positive developmental outcomes. This is important because it can be argued that, at best, current approaches are simply not appropriate to monitor the kinds of processes DLP research indicates are important; or, at worst, they offer few incentives to international assistance agencies to support the processes that actually lead to developmental outcomes (more…)
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Posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2011
Date: 3-5 October 2011
Venue: Oslo, Norway
ABOUT THE OSLO GOVERNANCE FORUM
The Oslo Governance Forum (OGF) is an initiative of the Oslo Governance Centre and the Democratic Governance Group of UNDP. The Forum will facilitate exchange of innovative experiences, knowledge and policy options among international development practitioners, academic institutions, government representatives and civil society from the global south.
The Oslo Governance Forum will take place from the 3-5 October 2011. The overarching focus is on governance assessments and their current and potential contribution to improving social accountability within developing countries. For the purposes of the OGF, social accountability has a wide meaning and relates to the mechanisms and instruments that are used by communities, groups and ordinary people to make governments and their agents, answerable and responsive in terms of the commitments that they have made. Governance assessments are an increasingly important tool for monitoring whether governments are failing or succeeding in terms of their commitments in legislation, government policies and international law.
To date, much of the focus of the development community on governance assessments, has been on the “supply side”, that is, improving the methodological aspects of an assessment and getting the right indicators. The OGF will focus on the “demand side”, examining, discussing and sharing experiences on how governance assessments are used by stakeholders as a basis for dialogue on governance deficits, as an instrument to monitor performance and as an input for revising and correcting policies. One of the key elements of democratic governance and accountability is empowerment of the people and the fostering of demand- and people driven accountability as opposed to accountability to external actors like donors.
The world is changing rapidly and never before has democratic governance and accountability been so visibly important on the global stage. The Arab Spring revolutions have shown that governments must take people’s calls for accountability and their rights to be governed democratically more seriously. These events have also added to the growing number of case studies that attest to the potential of social media and related technologies for mobilizing people for change.”
See the Forum home page for more information as well as the Concept Note for the Forum
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Posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2011
Date: OCTOBER 1-5, 2012
Venue: HELSINKI, Finland
Conference website
EVALUATION IN THE NETWORKED SOCIETY: NEW CONCEPTS, NEW CHALLENGES, NEW SOLUTIONS
The Tenth Biennial Conference of the European Evaluation Society will be the international evaluation event of the year. It will be held in Helsinki, Finland during 3-5 October 2012 (pre-conference workshops 1- 2 October).
Evaluators are living in times of unprecedented challenge and opportunity. The networked information environment is inducing fundamental changes in culture, politics and society. Whereas the industrial society was reliant on centralised, hierarchical, high cost information systems, the networked society is characterised by decentralised, voluntary and cheap information exchange.
The advent of social networking without borders will have fundamental implications for evaluation agendas and methods. First, it will redefine the value and legitimacy of evaluation in global social accountability networks and accelerate the internationalisation of evaluation. Second, evaluation cultures, structures and processes will have to deal with the limitless quantity, speed and accessibility of information generated by new technologies, e.g. drawing useful meaning from huge data bases, assessing the validity of an exploding number of rating systems, league tables, etc. in ways consistent with democratic values of freedom of expression and protection of privacy.
The new information technologies offer new ways of making authority responsible and accountable as well as bringing real time citizen involvement and reliable information to bear on public policy making. What are the implications of an information economy that allows instant connectivity to thousands of program beneficiaries suddenly able to make their voices heard? Will the spread of mobile telephony to the weakest and most vulnerable members of society and the rising power of social networks act as evaluative and recuperative mechanisms or will they merely aggravate social instability? What are the risks of network capture by single or special interest groups and cooptation of evaluation?
The rise of the evaluation discipline is inextricably linked to the values central to any democratic society. How will these values be protected in a context where weak links and increasing inequalities have created new fissures in society? How will evaluation independence be protected against the pressures of vested interests intent on retaining control over the commanding heights of the society?
To help explore these and other issues relevant to the prospects of evaluation in Europe and beyond the Conference will stimulate evaluators to share ideas, insights and opinions about a wide range of topics that will throw light on the future roles of evaluation in the networked society. The Conference will help draw evaluation lessons learnt in distinct sectors and regions of the world. It will also examine the potential of alternative and mixed evaluation methods in diverse contexts and probe the challenges of assessing public interest in complex adaptive systems and networks.
To these ends the Conference will offer participants a wide choice of vehicles for the transmission of evaluation experience and knowledge: keynote speeches, paper presentations, panel debates, posters, etc. As in past years the EES Conference will aim at a pluralistic agenda that respects the legitimacy of different standpoints, illuminates diverse perspectives and promotes principled debate. The Conference will also provide an opportunity for evaluation networks to interact and improve the coherence of their activities.
We look forward to welcoming you in Helsinki. It is one of the world leaders in modern design and it provides Europe with a world class high tech platform. It also boasts a 450 year history and lays claim to being the warmest, friendliest, most “laid back” city of Northern Europe. Its nearby archipelago of islands offers an ideal environment for sea cruises and its neighboring old growth forests provide an idyllic setting for restful nature walks. We promise you an enjoyable as well as a professionally rewarding time!!
Ian Davies, President, European Evaluation Society
Maria Bustelo, Vice President and President Elect, European Evaluation Society
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Posted on Monday, September 5th, 2011
Venue: Old Parliament House, 18 King George Tce, Parkes 8222, Canberra
Date: Tuesday, 13 September 2011 6:00 PM
Summary
“In a world where we have achieved so much, from quantum leaps in medical research to the development of sophisticated technologies, it seems implausible that there are more hungry people in the world today than the populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union combined.
But the picture isn’t all bleak. A recent report released by the United Nations reveals that we have made some significant progress in our bid to alleviate poverty around the world, and the Independant Review of Aid Effectiveness commissioned by the Australian Government has made some assessments and recommendations that could help guide progress in the future.
However, when it comes to the complex issue of poverty alleviation, there are no simple answers.
What are some of the challenges faced when it comes to ensuring that we are taking the smartest and most efficient approach to tackling poverty? What are the timeframes within which we can realistically expect change to happen? And are we doing enough to address structural and behavioural issues that perpetuate gender inequality and other forms of exploitation that continue the vicious cycle of poverty.
How much of a difference are we actually making?”
Speakers include:
- James Batley – Deputy Director-General, Asia Pacific and Program Enabling Group, AusAID
- Stephen Howes – Director, Development Policy Centre, ANU and member of Independent Aid Effectiveness Review panel
- Dr Julia Newton-Howes – Chief Executive, CARE AustraliaNikunj Soni – Board Chair, Pacific Institute of Public Policy, Vanuatu
Registration and other information here
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Posted on Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
Date: 18 October 2011
Venue: New Delhi, India
[found courtesy of Sarah Earl]
“Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is ubiquitous in every aspect of our lives. Gradually ICT is acquiring a key role in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of development projects by reinforcing the efficacy of data management and processing processes. As ICT is a whole new world for many professionals in the development sector, it becomes important to seek synergies from leading development actors and practitioners for perspective building, dissemination of knowledge and furthering the use of ICT in monitoring, evaluation and information system. How ICT influences on the collective activities and interest of the society in general has become an ineluctable question which could be well answered through the monitoring and evaluation process.”
“In this context a conference on ICT for monitoring and evaluation is being organized by Sambodhi Research & Communications on October 18, 2011 in New Delhi. The theme of the conference is “ICT for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Information System: Exploring New Frontiers.”
To participate in the conference click the following to download
For more information on the conference
Contact : Dr. Mary/Ms. Padmavati
Email : contact@sambodhi.co.in
Tel : 011 47593300-99
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