I would like to contribute with my own experience but I would first like to reaffirm that participation in evaluation is beneficial under certain conditions. I worked for the Ministry of Health in Morocco and for the United Nations system.
Sometimes I find myself as an evaluator and sometimes as a commissioner of the evaluation, in both cases the different evaluations led me to develop my technical skills on the technical object evaluated and on the tools and process used.
I concluded that when the commissioner participates in the evaluation since the design of the terms of reference and the methodology, the results of the evaluation will be relevant and useful. But when the evaluator evolves alone on one side, isolates himself in conducting his evaluation discreetly without involving users of evaluation in what he seeks to prove through his tools (interview, focus group, mid-term and final validation workshops), often in this case the result is disappointing and the problem will arise first at the level of the validation of the results and the recommendations will be dead letter, it is a pure waste of the resources. As a result, the quality and the profile and the behavior of the expert also comes into play. When participation is effective everyone everyone helps to inform the evaluator about the sources of the data to help him better interpret events and figures, when the evaluator is skillful he enjoys the dialogue and mutual feedback that is beneficial to both sides.
As far as I am concerned, the most recent example (December 2018) concerns the evaluation of the implementation of the maternal death surveillance system in 5 countries in the Arab region (Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan). Methodology design based on WHO standard tools, nomination of a country evaluator who collected data from the country, organization of an inter-country workshop for synthesis, sharing of results and drafting summary reports for the region with policy briefs for advocacy with policy makers. Sponsors and teams from all five countries appreciated their participation in the process and the relevance of the recommandations.
RE: What can evaluations do in terms of capacity development?
I would like to contribute with my own experience but I would first like to reaffirm that participation in evaluation is beneficial under certain conditions. I worked for the Ministry of Health in Morocco and for the United Nations system.
Sometimes I find myself as an evaluator and sometimes as a commissioner of the evaluation, in both cases the different evaluations led me to develop my technical skills on the technical object evaluated and on the tools and process used.
I concluded that when the commissioner participates in the evaluation since the design of the terms of reference and the methodology, the results of the evaluation will be relevant and useful. But when the evaluator evolves alone on one side, isolates himself in conducting his evaluation discreetly without involving users of evaluation in what he seeks to prove through his tools (interview, focus group, mid-term and final validation workshops), often in this case the result is disappointing and the problem will arise first at the level of the validation of the results and the recommendations will be dead letter, it is a pure waste of the resources. As a result, the quality and the profile and the behavior of the expert also comes into play. When participation is effective everyone everyone helps to inform the evaluator about the sources of the data to help him better interpret events and figures, when the evaluator is skillful he enjoys the dialogue and mutual feedback that is beneficial to both sides.
As far as I am concerned, the most recent example (December 2018) concerns the evaluation of the implementation of the maternal death surveillance system in 5 countries in the Arab region (Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan). Methodology design based on WHO standard tools, nomination of a country evaluator who collected data from the country, organization of an inter-country workshop for synthesis, sharing of results and drafting summary reports for the region with policy briefs for advocacy with policy makers. Sponsors and teams from all five countries appreciated their participation in the process and the relevance of the recommandations.