Evaluation in DFID

The Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact

1. DFID's proven commitment to ensuring that our aid has impact (and evaluating it ourselves)

• The UK government is committed to independent and high quality evaluation of international development assistance. As we spend more on reducing poverty, it is vital that we are rigorous in assessing impact and directing resources where it can make the most difference. Independent evaluation has an important role to play.
• Like most development agencies, DFID’s major programmes and policies are already subject to regular, independent evaluation. All such evaluations are published and the vast majority are written by recognised experts from outside DFID and are challenging.
• The OECD 2006 peer review of the UK described a ‘rejuvenation’ of DFID’s evaluation function, with additional investment in staff, skills and resources to commission studies.
• The new Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact will further strengthen this approach in a way which learns from international experience. It will determine what is evaluated and when, safeguarding both independence and quality.

2. Scrutiny that already exists:

• International development is quite heavily scrutinised and evaluated already. We have decided to strengthen independence in a way which complements and adds value to existing systems.
• Apart from scrutiny by parliamentary select committees, DFID’s international development assistance is subject to external scrutiny by the National Audit Office, independent audit, peer review, monitoring of Public Service Agreements and international monitoring of commitments under the Paris Declaration, to name only a few.
• In recent years, DFID has published or helped to commission evaluations by independent experts in many key areas such as:

  • Policies and programmes on budget support, HIV and AIDS, gender and women’s empowerment, technical assistance in Africa, and conflict prevention.
  • 13 country programme evaluations including Bangladesh, Kenya, Vietnam, Nepal, Rwanda and Mozambique. A further 11 are in progress or planned over the next 2 years.
  • A synthesis was published last year of around 900 DFID reviews of projects completed between 2000 and 2005 including ratings on project success. It showed that 71% of projects were ‘successful’ or ‘largely successful’.
  • The major evaluation of the UK’s work on HIV and AIDS was published earlier this year. This was commissioned by DFID and other government departments with strong involvement from NGOs and has been influential in the policy development in DFID.

• High quality evaluations are often best done in partnership and the UK is playing a leading role:

  • The multi-donor evaluation of budget support was one of the largest ever of this type. It was led by the UK as one of 24 donors and seven developing countries. It is recognised as definitive and has helped to inform policy design and implementation in the UK and overseas.
  • We are helping to fund a multidonor evaluation under the OECD Development Assistance Committee of progress against the Paris Declaration commitments.
  • The UK is chairing a new donor network on impact evaluation with strong developing country involvement
  • DFID is a founder member of a new international initiative on impact evaluation with the Gates and Hewlett Foundations.
  • The UK has fed into the major impact evaluation of the Global Fund for HIV, TB and malaria

3. How IACDI will strengthen that and deliver better aid:

• The new independent Committee will assure the independence of the evaluation function without setting up new structures for their own sake or duplicating international systems.
• Lessons from other countries, for example Ireland and Denmark, suggest that a strong evaluation function within DFID that is subject to external challenge and reporting will be a powerful combination.
• Excellent progress has been made in setting up the Committee quickly and it will meet for the first time in December 2007. The Chair of the Committee is David Peretz, an independent consultant and senior adviser to the IMF Independent Evaluation Office, the World Bank, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and other international organisations.
• Five committee members (short biographies available here) have also been appointed and a sixth, who can bring a southern voice to the Committee and feed in views of partner countries directly, will be identified shortly. This means the Committee will be able to draw on high-level evaluation expertise both from the UK and internationally.
• The Committee boasts some of the world’s leading thinkers from the UK and internationally on evaluation and on international development. Because of this expertise, the committee will be able not only to oversee and safeguard independence but also to add value and challenge to DFID’s thinking directly.
• The committee will have important powers to

  • determine which programmes and areas of UK development assistance will be evaluated and when
  • identify any gaps in the planned programme of evaluations and make proposals for new areas or other priorities as required
  • check that relevant international standards are being applied and comment on the quality of the evaluation work.
  • monitor how far evaluation outputs are used and followed up in practice

• In line with its role, the committee will operate in a transparent and independent way and significant leverage over DFID’s evaluation work:

  • Members and chair have been selected by an independent panel following usual public appointments procedures.
  • The chair will report annually to the Secretary of State on the quality and independence of studies, what needs to be done to improve evaluations and how far DFID is following up on them.
  • This reporting will be directly to the Secretary of State, independent of DFID and accompanied by DFID’s response.
  • All findings will be published and IACDI will have its own website.
  • The International Development Committee will be able to draw on the published findings and the IACDI chair will be able to appear before the committee where appropriate.

• IACDI will also benefit from having two participant observers on the committee – one from the National Audit Office to help make links to their work on international development and a senior civil servant from another government department that does major evaluations.

Last updated: 15 November 2007

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