aes24 International Evaluation Conference

Authors: John Gargani (Gargani + Co ),Julian King (Julian King & Associates, NZ)

In this participatory session, we pose the question, "How should evaluators innovate the practice of value-for-money assessment to meet the needs of an expanding set of actors that include governments, philanthropists, impact investors, social entrepreneurs, program designers, and Indigenous and First Nations communities?" We begin by framing value for money as an evaluative question about an economic problem. How well are we using resources, and are we using them well enough to justify their use? Then we suggest new methods intended to help innovate the practice of value for money based on our body of published and current research spanning over 10 years.
These include new methods that (1) produce "holistic" assessments of value for money, (2) reflect rather than hide multiple value perspectives even when values conflict, (3) estimate social benefit-cost ratios without monetizing benefits or costs, and (4) adjust monetary and nonmonetary value for risk using Bayesian methods. Along the way, we facilitate discussions with participants, asking them to consider if, how, and by whom these innovations should be pursued, and what other innovations may be needed. We provide participants with access to a collection of our published and draft papers, and invite them to comment and continue our discussion after the conference.

Authors: Alli Burness (Tetra Tech), Lisa Faerua (Vanuatu), Nathan Sentance (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, AU), David Lakisa (Talanoa Consultancy, AU)

In the inaugural ANU Coral Bell Lecture on Indigenous Diplomacy, Dr Mary Graham outlined a powerful legacy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander relational methods that have operated across a spectacular time scale. She envisioned a compelling future for its renewed application and spoke of these practices as a type of "thinking in formation, a type of slow, collective, and emergent process".

Inspired by Dr Graham's vision, this panel explores synergies, distinctions, and complementarities in local and Indigenous research methods across Australia and the Pacific. The panel features Wiradjuri, Samoan (Polynesian), Ni-Vanuatu (Melanesian) and settler-background (Australian) researchers from a range of fields who will explore, engage and showcase locally specific methodologies that connect across Australia and the Pacific continents, as ways of knowing, doing, and relating with the land, the moana (ocean) and air.

This session frames evaluation and research approaches as reflecting their contextual political order. While the panel will critique the legacies of individualist and survivalist research methods, it will focus on exploring the futures that relational research methods could realize. How do we evolve current institutional approaches to become more commensurate with Indigenous methods? Would institutionalizing these methods resolve the legacy, structure, and form of colonialist political approaches? Panelists will speak to their experience in working to evolve institutions in this way and the research and evaluation methodologies used within them.

The session also situates evaluation within a cannon of contextualizing evidence-based practices (such as political economy analysis, GEDSI analysis or feasibility.

Authors: Victoria Pilbeam (WWF-Australia)

Across social and environmental movements, we are often reticent to talk about failure. But as innovation and learning gain greater emphasis across the sector, Not-for Profits are finding new ways to share and learn from their failures (eg: Engineers Without Borders failure reports, Save the Children Fail Fest, etc.). In this presentation, I will share both insights from the available research and reflect on my own journey developing failure programming at WWF-Australia. This presentation will provide practical guidance to evaluators and organisations navigating the challenging terrain of learning from failure.

Authors: Linda Kelly (Praxis Consultants), Mary Raori (UNDP Pacific, FJ)

This presentation outlines an approach to program assessment of a long-term governance program working across the Pacific, the UNDP Governance for Resilience program. It tells the story of the program’s maturing evaluation approach which has shifted from serving the information needs of those with money and power to focus more particularly on the values and interests of local participants and partners..
Despite the well-documented limitations of single methodology evaluation approaches for complex programs, many international development donors and corresponding international and regional organisations, continue to require program assessment that serves their needs and values. Typically, this includes narrowing evaluation to assessment against quantitative indicators. Notwithstanding the extensive limitations of this approach, it serves the (usually short-term) needs of international donors and other large bureaucracies. It generates simple information that can be communicated and showcased in uncritical forms. It provides numbers that are easily aggregated and used for concise reporting to senior and political masters.
Such approaches risk crowding out attention to the information needs of other participants and undermine attempts to support more locally led processes. This presentation will explain how this long-term and large-scale program has shifted, making use of a values-based evaluative approach to better serve the interests of partners and participants in the Pacific. This has involved both a methodological and political shift, broadening the range of data collection and analysis methodologies and approaches, increasing resourcing to accommodate different types of data and data collection and internal and external advocacy. This one program experience echoes wider views across the Pacific about the limitations of externally imposed measures and the lack of attention to what is valued by pacific countries and people.

Authors: Julian King (Julian King & Associates), Adrian Field (Dovetail)

The rapid growth of video-conferencing technology has increased the ability for evaluations to be conducted across multiple countries and time zones. People are increasingly used to meeting and working entirely online, and evaluations can in principle be designed and delivered without need for face to face engagement. Translational AI software is even able to break through language barriers, providing further efficiencies and enabling evaluation funds to be directed more to design, data gathering and analysis.

Yet the efficiency of delivery should not compromise the integrity with which an evaluation is conducted. This is particularly true in situations where different dimensions of equity come into question, and in an evaluation where two or more languages are being used, ensuring that the design and delivery are meaningful and accessible to all participants, not just the funder.

The growth of remote evaluation working presents a very real, if not even more pressing danger, of the consultant "parachuting in" and offering solutions that have little or no relevance to the communities who are at the centre of the evaluation process.

In this presentation we explore the wayfinding process in designing and implementing a Value for Investment evaluation of an urban initiative focusing on the developmental needs of young children, in Jundiaí, Brazil. We discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by a largely (but ultimately not entirely) online format, in leading a rigorously collaborative evaluation process, and gathering data in a way that ensures all stakeholder perspective are appropriately reflected. We discuss the trade-offs involved in this process, the reflections of evaluation participants, and the value of ensuring that underlying principles of collaborative and cross-cultural engagement are adhered to.

Authors: Sandra Ayoo (University of North Carolina Greensboro)

With quality in improving interventions to improve societal and planetary wellbeing being the desired destination of evaluation, it is imperative that evaluators reflect on the meaning of quality and methods to assess if evaluation is achieving it. Meta-evaluation, coined by Michael Scriven in 1969, evaluates evaluations and aids in understanding how evaluations contribute to addressing structural and systemic problems in interventions and evaluation practice. Meta-evaluation has evolved over the past five decades and is included in the program standards by major professional associations. While the field of evaluation is confronted with major concerns regarding the centrality of social justice, there is currently there are no one-size-fits-all guidelines for meta-evaluation and for addressing social justice in evaluations. To address this, we reviewed meta-evaluation literature, mapped the American Evaluation Association's foundational documents with the United Nations Evaluation Group's Norms and Standards to explore their intersectionality on social justice, and analyzed 62 United Nations Population Fund evaluation reports alongside their management responses. The study findings indicated that meta-evaluation is contingent on context rather than established standards. Thus, it's crucial for evaluators to intentionally prioritize social justice in evaluation design and implementation and to select quality assurance tools that match the evaluation context and professional association guidelines to improve the quality of the intervention. I will share key characteristics of the United Nations Group's Norms and Standards on social justice to stimulate discussions on evaluators' efforts to address systemic issues. Collectively, participants will benefit from discussing and reflecting on their own practice by responding to questions like (a) what are the examples of their work in collaborative and systems-informed ways to intentionally include social justice in their evaluations, and (b) what should the field of evaluation do to ensure that evaluations add value for people and planet?anagement response.

Authors: Allan Mua Illingworth (Mua'akia Consulting and Insight Pasifika) Fiona Fandim (Pacific Community (SPC), FJ), Eroni Wavu (MEL Officer for Pacific Women Lead at Pacific Community (SPC) and cofounder of the Fiji Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Community), Mereani Rokotuibau (Balance of Power Program, FJ) and Chris Roche (La Trobe University),

In recent years there have been a number of Pacific driven initiatives designed to promote monitoring and evaluation practice which is culturally and contextually appropriate. These have occurred with projects and programs as well as at national and regional levels. At the same time geo-political interest in the Pacific region has resulted in an increased number of bi and multilateral donor agencies becoming present in the region and/or funding development programs, local organisations, national governments and regional bodies. This has in turn led to an evaluation landscape where notions of 'international best practice' as well as donor policies and practices and associated international researcher and consulting companies, risk crowding out emergent Pacific led evaluation initiatives.

This panel will bring together key participants who are leading four examples of these Pacific experiences: the Rebbilib process initiated by the Pacific Community (SPC ), Insight Pasifika (an emerging Pacific led and owned collective focused on evaluation in the first instance): the Fiji Monitoring, Evaluation & Learning Community and the Balance of Power program (a Pacific-led initiative, supported by the Australian Government, focused improving the political, social and economic opportunities for women and girls) each of whom are seeking to create space for processes of monitoring, evaluation and learning which are consistent with Pacific ways of knowing and being. They will share their experience, the challenges they face and ideas about what forms of support might be provided by international donors, consultants and advisors which are enabling rather than undermining.

Moderated by Prof. Chris Roche the panel and audience will also draw out the lessons from these four cases about what might contribute to more systemic change in the evaluation landscape more generally.