International Development Evaluation Association

Denis JobinVice-PresidentIDEAS

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

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

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

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.’

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).

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;

IDEAS key achievements to date

Being member-driven: the Cairo workshop– More than 25 member-based proposals were examined

and assessed;1. The need to understand better how country-led

approaches (Prague, Niamey);2. The need to use IDEAS as a platform to develop and

offer incentive mechanisms that would reward leaders, pioneers and innovators;

3. The need to enhance the virtual forum of exchanges amongst members (Ideas discussion group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IDEAS-Int/).

Some challenges

Moving toward a permanent secretariatOverall 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 (P&S); Delivering collective P&S: excludable but non-rival;

– Volunteering nature of IDEAS and level of effort– The small number problem: increasing the number of

stakeholders

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.

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@yahoo.ca