Consultancy, Analysis of international RIE experiences

  • Senior-level, Short-term contract assignment
  • Posted on 11 February 2020

Job Description

DEval is looking for an experienced expert or a group of up to three experienced experts from universities, research institutes, think tanks, development consultancies or similarly suitable institutions to support the RIE project team within the research pillar of the project.

The consultant (group) shall support | This analysis shall cover the following two components:

  1. International experiences with regard to the (systematic) implementation of RIEs in development cooperation.
  2. International experiences with regard to the (systematic) use of available (a) global and (b) in-house evidence, both rigorous and based on other (e.g., more qualitative) methods.

The analysis is supposed to provide insights into existing international experiences and international best practices for these components. The focus of the intended analysis lies on institutionalized approaches for conducting RIEs and using and disseminating existing rigorous evidence.

Bidder Questions:

What language does the proposal/offer have be written in?
- Porposals/offers will be accepted in English or German.

What format does the CV / do the CVs of researchers have to be in?
- We do not request a certain format for the CVs. Europass can be used as template, in case a standardised format is desired by bidders/tenderers.

Does the front page of the technical offer count as part of the 5-page max. proposal?
- The front page/cover does not count as part of the 5-pages the proposal shall be limited to.

What additional documents have to be handed in (enclosures)?
- Additionally to the documents downloadable on devex (see below), you will be required to hand in the following enclosures, right after having sent your encrypted proposal:
1. Declaration to protect against the Scientology organisation
2. Declaration of Commitment to Safeguarding the Confidentiality of Personal Data
3. Declaration of independence
4. Information pursuant to Art. 13 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Is it possible to form a bidding consortium with a company/concultancy outside of the EU? Are there any restrictions regarding the percentage of subcontracted work?
- It is possible to form a bidding consortium with a company/consultancy outside of the EU. There are no restrictions for bidding consortia regarding the percentage of subcontracted work.

About the Organization

About DEval

The German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval) was founded in 2012 and is based in Bonn, Gemany. The institute is organized as a German non-profit institution with limited liability (German Limited Liability Companies Act, GmbH). Its sole shareholder is the German Federal Government, represented by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). The main task of DEval is the independent analysis and assessment (evaluation) of German development cooperation interventions. Additional tasks include the development of appropriate methods and standards, providing qualification measures, as well as supporting evaluation capacity building in the partner countries for German development cooperation. The institute thereby engages in various national and international forms of cooperation.

About the project

German development cooperation focuses on generating positive outcomes in partner countries. Besides other activities like impact-oriented monitoring, aggregated result-reporting and alike, the generation and use of rigorous impact evaluations seems to be rare. Yet compared to the scientific landscape of 10 years ago, some rigorous impact evaluations have been conducted or initiated by or with the participation of German development cooperation actors. Compared to other major donor countries, these activities are still rather unsystematic and they remain low in number (the current estimate is about 45 rigorous evaluations in total over the last 5 years). Furthermore, the existing (nationally and internationally generated) rigorous evidence is not always systematically synthesized and used in development programming and policy-making.

Purpose of the project

The work package described in the attached Terms of Reference (Annex 1) is part of a BMZ-funded DEval project on rigorous impact evaluation (RIE), the second phase of which runs from 01/01/2020 until 31/12/2021. In this project, rigorous impact evaluations are understood as evaluations using either experimental or quasi-experimental evaluation methods for attributing observed changes to particular development interventions.

The goal of DEval’s RIE project is to develop recommendations for actors within German development cooperation to ensure the systematic generation and use of rigorous evidence.

The project has three pillars:

  1. Research: The current state of rigorous impact evaluation in Germany will be assessed and enabling and hindering factors for the implementation of rigorous impact evaluations and the use of rigorous evidence identified. Those factors shall be contrasted with lessons learnt from other countries in order to find mechanisms to reduce hindering factors and support enabling factors.
  2. Community-building: Community-building across disciplines and institutions will be fostered by conducting workshops, conferences and expert-group meetings in order to improve coordination and to generate synergies between different relevant actors.
  3. Technical support: Support to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), implementing organisations, and civil society organisations for rigorous impact evaluation shall be provided.

The main purpose of the analysis described in the Terms of Reference (Annex 1) is learning: As part of DEval’s objective of contributing to increased effectiveness as well as efficiency and sustainability of German development cooperation, this analysis aims at generating important lessons from international experiences regarding the systematic implementation and use of RIE within different institutional evaluation and knowledge brokering systems. The results of this analysis – in combination with results of other research activities of the project – will in turn be used to inform recommendations for the integration of RIE in the German development cooperation system (see chapter 1.2).

The intended user of this analysis is DEval’s RIE project team. Beyond informing the RIE team, the analysis will also be used to feed into a broader discussion with stakeholders of the German and international development cooperation.

More information

2020_001_01_RIE_International_RIE_Procedures.pdf
Tender_2020_01_001_RIE_International_RIE.pdf

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