Impact of current conditions and the role of evaluators
Planning: The challenges and uncertainty in this world pose a threat to corporate strategies, including evaluation plans.
Therefore, financial priorities and strategic directions may differ, which calls for institutions to think about the continued feasibility to evaluate projects that will no longer be among their top priorities.
When we talk about a pandemic such as Corona (Covid-19), other priorities emerge ahead as institutions and evaluators that govern all our directions, basically the health of our employees, our partners, and most importantly, the health of beneficiaries or evaluators.
Stay connected: During the pandemic, the world has made a paradigm shift to a new concept of remote work, which may have repercussions on communication and the sustainable knowledge of work updates among employees, including the team in charge of monitoring and evaluation (M&E). This may impact the extent to which the team stays tuned, and may affect the big picture needed by the evaluation team to stay connected.
Data collection: In light of the curfew and suspending all movement into or out of the country.
Evaluators face great challenges to reach out the beneficiaries and conduct interviews. Here the need arises to introduce new methods of data collection through remote interviews by using available applications intended to this purpose, online surveys, satellite imaging, and telephone surveys or otherwise.
These tools, although are helpful to outreach beneficiaries, however, challenges encountered that may affect the data collection process, including poor internet connection in several areas, threats to privacy and data confidentiality, difficulty of access to beneficiaries in hard-to-reach places and the lack of freedom for data sharing as a result of the closure, especially for some groups in society whose circumstances prevent them from participating.
Absorption and Judgment on Available Data: In the circumstances of social distancing and interrupted communication between people and its effects on economic, social and other conditions, several unexpected factors affect the causal relationship on which the evaluation is based (A cause-effect relationship).
In light of the difficult enumeration of factors that may have an effect on this relationship, there is a need for analysis and judgment based on the available data, checking an update of assumptions, and learning by doing. Here, the evaluation focuses on the short-term results rather than the long-term ones, which may not appear until after the implementation of the project under such circumstances. Here, applying new concepts is needed such as the real-time monitoring evaluation synthesis and other means for ways to share the results with decision-makers in a more streamlined manner, without causing any delay.
Post-pandemic Evaluation:
Evaluation projects can be suspended due to the impact of the pandemic, and despite its adverse effects, we, as evaluators, should play a key role in evaluating the impact of the pandemic on our projects, our communities and the underlying sectors.
There may be a need to find quick and simple ways to ensure the sharing of evaluation results with decision and policy makers, for example, by sharing real time monitoring and evaluation synthesis, as well as the need to discuss the results of the evaluation with senior management and ensure implementation through the development of action plans, together with specific steps and identification of the relevant stakeholders for each step of the plan.
But what is our role as evaluators in the light of the current circumstances?
In light of a wide array of ongoing and several transformations in the world ,given the economic and social changes and mutations related to access such as social distancing and quarantine in light of the Corona pandemic (Covid-19), a responsive evaluation is needed to tackle changes related to evaluation methodology and outcomes .
Zenda Ofir says that the Resilience of evaluation lies in its ability to be adaptive like a compass for guidance for the communities while navigating difficult terrain.” This Resilience does not appear overnight, and much work is needed to be done for the evaluation to reach this stage and be able to keep pace with serious and harsh changes in the world.
Awareness and belief in the significance of evaluation and its key role in offering evidence imposes on us as evaluators to be proactive, advocating for change, and this clearly shows the importance of continuous sharing of the evaluation process with Decision makers as an helping tool that will provide facts of what is going on, and this prompts us to emphasize the need to create an evaluation-based culture in organizations.
Away from complications, Flexible and simple evaluation constitutes an urgent matter in this complicated period. Therefore, resorting to multi-methods of data collection according to availability, speed in sharing data and adapting to new circumstances are one example. Now the key to all this is to learn lessons from this stage, and make best use of the new tools in the future when life returns to the way it was before COVID-19.
Resources:
Independent Evaluation Office.(2020). Evaluation during a The crisis: COVID-19, http://web.undp.org
(2017) Real time evaluation, https://www.intrac.org/
Macfarlan,A.(2020). Adaptation of the evaluation at the time COVID-19 – Part 1: Management, https://www.betterevaluation.org
Ofir, Z.(2020). Transforming Evaluations and COVID-19, Part 1. A GPS for complex terrain, https://zendaofir.com
Patton.M.(2020). Evaluation Implications of the Coronavirus Global Health Pandemic Emergency, https://bluemarbleeval.org.
Tyrrel, L. Kelly,L. Roche,C. Jackson,E.(2020). Uncertainty and COVID-19: A turning point for Monitoring Evaluation, Research and Learning? A discussion note for aid actors, policymakers and practitioners, Governance and Development Working Paper Series, Abt Associates Governance and Development Practice, the Institute for Human Security and Social Change at La Trobe University.
