Call to action for Impact Evaluation

A team supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and comprising members of iScale, Keystone, the International Development Research Centre, EvalNet and RMIT C.I.R.C.L.E has launched an initiative for Impact Evaluation for Improving Development (IE4ID). The team has developed an action agenda document which sets out the requirements for impact evaluation to address the changing realities of development in the 21st century.

First, it describes how we need to rethink impact evaluation by focusing specifically on the nature of development, and how impact evaluation processes and findings can and should contribute to better development.

Second, it describes how we need to reshape IE4ID, using different methods and strategies to rigorously conduct and support use of impact evaluation.

Finally, it identifies essential steps to fundamentally reform the enabling environment of impact evaluation for improving development. International cooperation will be required between commissioners and practitioners for IE4ID to occur in this way.

Rethinking Impact Evaluation

1.    Impact evaluation can and should contribute to improved development
Improving the quality of information is important, but it is not sufficient for impact evaluation to make significant contributions. Impact evaluation of development should be deliberately undertaken for development.

2.    Impact evaluation can and should suit the nature of development
Development initiatives in the 21st century are often interrelated, complicated and complex.

Reshaping Impact Evaluation

3.    Impact evaluation can and should be embedded within robust systems of monitoring, assessment and learning
Evaluations must be embedded in transparent and effective systems for impact planning, assessment and learning that include all relevant stakeholders, including primary consitituents.

4.    Impact evaluation can and should produce a comprehensive picture
Evaluation must provide balanced assessments.

5.    Impact evaluation can and should explain how and why impacts occur
Impact evaluation needs to assist knowledge translation about what works, under what conditions, how and why, and hence how  success might be achieved in other places and times.

6.    Impact evaluation can and should draw from methodological developments in the natural and social sciences
Efforts to improve the rigour and utlity of impact evaluation are hampered by conceptualisations of science that are inaccurate and outdated.

Reforming Impact Evaluation

7.    Rethinking and reshaping impact evaluation requires fundamental reform
This paper is a call to action to those who want to make impact evaluation relevant, credible, and useful for improved development. To those who want to make a difference, to
those who want to bring about change, we extend an invitation to become involved.

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