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Tag: Impact Evaluation

 

It Takes Two to Quango: Does the UK’s Independent Commission for Aid Impact Duplicate or Add Value?

5/13/13
William Savedoff

The United Kingdom has been a stalwart funder and innovator in foreign assistance for almost 20 years. In 2011, it created the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) to report to Parliament on the country’s growing aid portfolio. ICAI is a QUANGO in Brit-speak – a quasi-public non-governmental organization - with a 4-year mandate which is undergoing review this year. Recently, I took a look at the reports it has produced to see whether the organization is fulfilling its role in holding the country’s overseas development aid programs accountable.  I found one fascinating report which shows what ICAI could be doing and many more reports that made me wonder whether ICAI is duplicating work already within the purview of the agency, Department for International Development (DFID), which accounts for most of the UK’s foreign assistance programs.

The Biggest Experiment in Evaluation: MCC and Systematic Learning

11/5/12
William Savedoff

MCC recently published five impact evaluations on farmer training programs – the first of many because MCC, unlike most other development agencies, is conducting such studies for about 40 percent of its portfolio. I would argue that this makes MCC the biggest experiment in evaluation: an entire agency committed to seriously produce impact evaluations on a large share of its operations and publicly disseminate them.

Impact Evaluations Everywhere: What’s a Small NGO to Do?

9/17/12
William Savedoff

I frequently get inquiries from organizations that recognize the importance of rigorous evaluation and yet aren’t quite sure how they can do it. They see the growing number of random assignment or quasi-experimental studies and are attracted to the apparent objectivity and relative certainty of quantitative studies, but they are often reticent to dive into those approaches. Sometimes organizations have reasonable concerns about costs, lack of expertise, or the applicability of such approaches to the questions they care about.

Impact Evaluations and the 3ie: William Savedoff

5/2/11
Lawrence MacDonald

Efforts to design better aid programs often are hampered by the failure to evaluate what works—and what doesn’t—in existing programs. Today, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation and other important efforts are helping fill the evaluation gap.

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