Person:
Rist, Ray C.
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Monitoring and evaluation,
Governance,
Public sector reforms,
Results-based management
Degrees
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Ray C. Rist is in his second term as president of International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS). He is also a co-founder and co-director of the International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET). Retired from the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank, he continues to advise organizations and governments throughout the world on how to design and build results-based monitoring and evaluation systems. His career includes senior appointments in the U.S. government, academic institutions, and the World Bank. He is the author or editor of 31 books and more than 150 articles. He presently serves on the boards of nine professional journals.
Publication Search Results
1 - 3 of 3
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Publication
Development Evaluation in Times of Turbulence : Dealing with Crises that Endanger Our Future
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-04-19)The presence of turbulence in multiple areas of our society--food, fuel, and finances-being but three critical areas presently being impacted means that long-held assumptions are no longer true, that the past is not prologue, and that the future is not clear. And enter into this unstable present the discipline of evaluation-a discipline formed and shaped in the past fifty years of stability, little turbulence, and strong assumptions that everything will go according to plan. If things do not go well, it is because of either a poor theory of change on how to bring about positive outcomes, or weak efforts at implementation. It is not because of the stormy present upsetting our quiet past. As it is, conventional evaluation behavior and beliefs are ill suited for these times. The transformational nature of the 'Arab Spring' is just one arena in which it is clear that a business as usual approach to evaluation is entirely inappropriate. The papers in this volume are from the 2011 Global Assembly of the International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS). Nearly 350 development evaluators from eighty-five countries came together in Amman, Jordan to discuss and analyze the consequences of turbulence on evaluation. The intent of these papers is to systematically assess what changes have come during this time of turbulence and how these changes are impacting the craft of development evaluation. To be clear: this book is not about how to assess the impacts of crises on development and on people's lives. It is about the meaning of a changed world and changed assumptions on the concepts and methods used in evaluation. -
Publication
Assessing Country Readiness for Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation Systems
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-06)Countries across the globe are facing pressures to reform their public sectors. An effective, efficient public sector is vital to sustainable development, economic growth, and citizens' well-being. Similarly, assessing government performance is crucial in determining a country's progress toward its development goals, whether defined by the Millennium Development Goals, a Policy Reduction Strategy Paper, a Country Assistance Strategy, or another policy statement. It is also important in analyzing a government's accountability to its citizens, by providing evidence on promised government performance. Focusing on performance can also be an effective public sector management tool, informing resource allocation decisions and monitoring of whether public initiatives are achieving expected results. As a result governments at all levels are under pressure to move beyond tracking inputs-and toward measuring results. -
Publication
Poverty, Inequality, and Evaluation: Changing Perspectives
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016)The basic premise of this book is that the conversation on the future of development needs to shift from a focus on poverty to that of inequality. The poverty emphasis is in an intellectual and political cul de sac. It does not address the fundamental question of why people are poor nor what can be done structurally and institutionally to reduce and eliminate it. The various chapters illustrate in the context of various countries and sectors around the world, the significant contributions that evaluators can make in terms of improvement of the analytical framework, analysis of the performance and results of specific programs and projects, as well as assessing and designing better public management systems in terms of poverty and inequality reduction. Beyond the specific contributions presented, three characteristics characterize those evaluations to be relevant for poverty and inequality analysis: a global-local approach: Global to move beyond disciplinary boundaries and consider cross-cutting issues, local to account for the diversity of countries, sectors, institutions and cultures considered; a problem-solving orientation: The issue evaluated is the core focus and determines the choice of evaluation methods to analyze this issue from a variety of angles; an evolutionary approach: Chapters presented are from iconoclasts who do not have any pre-established theory or school of thought to defend. This is the result of openness of mind and ability to adapt the analytical framework, the evaluation methods, and the interpretation of results in a constant interaction with the stakeholders. Such characteristics make evaluation a domain that can help understand better complex issues like poverty, inequality, vulnerability, and their interactions as well as propose a relevant and useful theory of change for public policies and projects to improve the plight of a large part of the world population in industrialized and developing countries alike.