International Development Evaluation Association

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International Development Evaluation Association
Denis Jobin Vice-President IDEAS
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Brief History

• Informal discussions between the World Bank and
  the UNDP
• London Meeting more than 40 development
  evaluation professionals
• Resulted London Declaration on the
  Establishment of IDEAS on May 8th 2001
• Established an Interim Steering Committee (ISC)
• IDEAS was launched on September 8th 2002 in
  Beijing
• IDEAS was formally established at the beginning
  of 2003 when it was registered with the Charities
  Commission of England and Wales as charity

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IDEAS Mission and Mandate

• Mission
• The advancement of education for the public
  benefit in the theories, methods and practice of
  evaluation
• in order to improve and expand the capacity for
  understanding and standards of evaluation
  predominantly in developing countries. ()
• Wide range of power and activity
• Establish databank, provide award, funding, carry
  out research, produce, publish any form of
  material
• to award annual prizes for outstanding
  contributions to the study of the theories,
  methodology and practice of evaluation
• to organise or make grants towards the cost of
  others organising meetings, lectures,
  conferences, broadcasts or courses of
  instruction
• More than 29 additional powers

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What needs are we addressing?

• Context Need to demonstrate results,
  accountability and impacts
• Monterey consensus-MDGs
• Requirements for evidences based
  policies/programs
• Paris Declaration
• IDEAS an Evaluation Association for development
  professional evaluators and individuals
  interested in Development evaluation who do not
  necessarily have such association in their
  country and who face various challenges related
  to the professional practices of Evaluation
• IDEAS a response to development professional
  evaluators needs
• Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD) training,
  bursaries, workshops
• Knowledge producer e-news, workshops, bi-annual
  conference
• Networking opportunities.
• IDEAS as a mean to bring developing and
  transition countries professional evaluators
  perspectives up-front of development issues

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What needs are we addressing?

• Recent IDEAS evaluation (2006) concluded that the
  association
• is highly relevant to the evaluation community
  in that it fills an identified need to support
  isolated evaluation professionals, to be a
  platform for convening key players in development
  evaluation and for advocating change, and as an
  instrument of capacity building.

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IDEAS key achievements

• IDEAS Website
• Up graded in 2005 to improved appearance, speed
  and usability
• Membership instant payment and web based is
  appreciated
• Will be up-graded in 2007 as well search
  function
• E-News
• The first Bi-annual was a good opportunity to
  launch the first IDEAS e-news
• Up-dated IDEAS Brochure to reflect new thinking
• IDEAS made contributions to the DAC-OECD
  (partnership conference in 2003).

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IDEAS key achievements to date

• Organized Panel sessions (Washington, 2003)
• Participated in Evaluation conferences
• 2004 Co-hosted with Parliamentary Center
  (Cambodia)
• Workshop on PPP in South Africa
• IDEAS was represented regional seminar in
  Southern Africa (Nelson Mandela Foundation)
• 2005 CES-AEA IDEAS was represented at the event
  and hosted a networking event
• 2006 UKES IDEAS was represented and participated
  at a panel
• 2006 IPEN IDEAS was represented and presented a
  paper
• 2006 DAC-OECD meetings Standards related to
  GPP
• 2006 CLE workshop- Prague, Czech Republic
• 2007 Afrea - Niamey IDEAS was represented and
  organized a Workshop on Country Led evaluation
• 2007 (May) IDEAS-RELAC Joint conference

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IDEAS key achievements to date

• Being member-driven the Cairo workshop
• More than 25 member-based proposals were examined
  and assessed
• The need to understand better how country-led
  approaches (Prague, Niamey)
• The need to use IDEAS as a platform to develop
  and offer incentive mechanisms that would reward
  leaders, pioneers and innovators
• The need to enhance the virtual forum of
  exchanges amongst members (Ideas discussion group
  http//groups.yahoo.com/group/IDEAS-Int/).

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Some challenges

• Moving toward a permanent secretariat
• Overall IDEAS level of effort is equivalent of 1
  FTE
• Sustaining IDEAS performance
• Recruitment and retention of members Membership
  strategy (draft)
• Delivering value-for-money and useful products
  and services (PS)
• Delivering collective PS excludable but
  non-rival
• Volunteering nature of IDEAS and level of effort
• The small number problem increasing the number
  of stakeholders

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Looking forwards

• Planning Meeting Montreal, January 2007
• Moving towards a Structure whereby IDEAS does not
  rely solely on the voluntary efforts of its Board
  members
• Developing more explicit by-Laws for some of our
  organizational processes, in particular our
  Election process.
• Addressing CDE needs as part of IDEAS mandate.

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Some observations on Managing for Development
Results-The role of incentives

• Limits of current MFDR models
• The perceived problem of MFDR is one of
  knowledge gap
• If individuals know how to MFDR, then they will
  manage for results
• Hence the multiplication of frameworks
• Un-stated flaw assumptions about human behaviour
• Interest of Individuals matches perfectly the
  interest of organisations
• Organisations and individuals are
  separate/distinct from each others.
• The path forward An approach who integrated the
  role of institution who shape human interactions
  by providing the right incentives for economic
  performance of organizations MFDR should be
  integrated with the system of sanctions and
  rewards within organisation.

Denis Jobin, Vice-President, IDEAS
Denis_Jobin_at_yahoo.ca