The next two videos from the EvalStory Campaign promoting the International Year of Evaluation are now available online.
The first video is from Ian Davies, Former Advisor to the President of the Treasury Board of Canada and Former President of the European Evaluation Society. Ian works with the highest levels of governments and organizations. He has successfully coached and advised parliamentarians, ministers, commissioners, boards and directors of national and multinational institutions on governance, leadership, reform, policy formulation and implementation, and accountability. He is a university lecturer, researcher, writer, and frequent professional conference speaker.
In his video, Mr. Davies examines the ability of evaluation to play a learning function, rather than an accountability function. Ultimately, evaluation should play a ‘public interest’ role, by focusing on what measures can be taken to learn from past mistakes and successes. Future priorities for the global evaluation agenda should include reflecting on the global political implications of climate change (including the global response to the issue of climate refugees).
The second video is from Ian Hopwood, former representative of the UNICEF office in Dakar and Honorary President of the Senegalese Evaluation Association (SenEval). He has worked in the development field for over 40 years for UNICEF, at headquarters and in field assignments in Africa, Asia and the Arab Gulf States.
In his video, Mr. Hopwood discusses how to build national ownership of evaluation processes. Evaluation conclusions would be more relevant if evaluations were to bring in local experts. Mr. Hopwood calls for two changes within the global evaluation community: 1) more concerted coordination at the global level (with more systematic adoption of global evaluation mandates at the national level); and 2) evaluation methods and approaches that take into account the contexts in which development initiatives take place. He feels that the global evaluation agenda should focus more on equity – and that the role of the evaluator should be to give a voice to everyone.
You are welcome to add your voice to the campaign by writing to Jérôme Gandin at jgandin@universalia.com. If you are interested in joining the EvalPartners initiative to promote an enabling environment for evaluation in line with the Global Evaluation Agenda, please write to Asela Kalugampitiya at aselakalugampitiya@yahoo.ie.