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:
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.
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 projectGerman 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 projectThe 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:
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.
