Publication: Influential Evaluations: Evaluations that Improved Performance and Impacts of Development Programs
Loading...
Other Files
78 downloads
Published
2004-09-22
ISSN
Date
2016-03-30
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This report presents 8 examples of evaluations that had a significant impact. In many cases it was possible to compare the costs of conducting the evaluation with the economic benefits produced and to show that the evaluation was a highly cost-effective management tool. The cases describe the following evaluations: Improving the efficiency of the Indian employment assurance scheme; Using citizen report cards to hold the state to account in Bangalore, India; Assessing the effectiveness of water and sanitation interventions in Flores, Indonesia; Broadening the policy framework for assessing the viability of large dams; The abolition of wheat-flour ration shops in Pakistan; Improving the delivery of primary education services in Uganda; Enhancing the performance of a major environmental project in Bulgaria; Helping re-assess China's national forest policy.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Operations Evaluation Department. 2004. Influential Evaluations: Evaluations that Improved Performance and Impacts of Development Programs. Evaluation Capacity Development working
paper series;ECD. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23974 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The Road to Results : Designing and Conducting Effective Development Evaluations(World Bank, 2009-12-01)The analytical, conceptual, and political framework of development is changing dramatically. The new development agenda calls for broader understandings of sectors, countries, development strategies, and policies. It emphasizes learning and continuous feedback at all phases of the development cycle. As the development agenda grows in scope and complexity, development evaluation follows suit. Development evaluator are moving away from traditional implementation and output-focused evaluation models toward results-based evaluation models, as the development community calls for results and embraces the millennium development goals. As the development community shifts its focus away from projects in order to comprehensively address country challenges, development evaluators are seeking methods with which to assess results at the country, sector, theme, policy, and even global levels. As the development community recognizes the importance of not only a comprehensive but also a coordinated approach to developing country challenges and emphasizes partnerships, development evaluators are increasingly engaged in joint evaluations. These joint evaluations, while advantageous in many respects, add to the complexity of development evaluation (OECD 2006). Additionally, development evaluators increasingly face the measurement challenge of determining the performance of an individual development organization in this broader context and of identifying its contribution. This text is intended as a tool for use in building development evaluation capacity. It aims to help development evaluators think about and explore the new evaluation architecture and especially to design and conduct evaluations that focus on results in meeting the challenges of development.Publication The Effectiveness of World Bank Support for Community-Based and -Driven Development(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2005)This report analyzes the effectiveness of the World Bank's lending support for the growing area of community-based development (CBD) and community-driven development (CDD). The latter supports the empowerment of the poor by giving communities control over subproject resources and decisions, while CBD gives communities less responsibility and emphasizes collaboration, consultation, or sharing information with them on project activities. Since the late 1990s, the focus of Bank-supported CBD/CDD projects has shifted toward CDD, though many CDD projects also include CBD components.Publication Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluation : Methods and Tools for Poverty and Inequality Reduction Programs(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)As the author enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), philanthropic organizations, and civil society groups worldwide are actively focusing on evidence-based policy and increased accountability to stakeholders (results agenda).The widespread implementation of the Results Agenda has generated a plethora of books, guides, academic papers, trainings, and case studies, which has enabled an ongoing maturation process in the field. Consequently, specialists are now better equipped to understand what works under which circumstances. Broadly speaking there are two interrelated questions which must be answered when assessing the sustainability of a government results agenda. First, is the institutional design and practice of government conducive to evidence-based policy making? Second, are the overarching monitoring and evaluation (M&E) methods and specific tools used appropriate for garnering the evidence demanded by government? These series of notes aim to make a small contribution to the latter question by summarizing and highlighting a selection of PM&E methods and the tools that governments and international organizations around the world have developed to put these into practice in their own contexts. The central goal of this initiative is to prompt a process of learning, reflection and action by providing practical information to those whose leadership role requires them to understand PM&E methods and their potential for enhancing evidence-based policy making.Publication Meta-Evaluation of IEG Evaluations (FY15-19)(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022-02-14)IEG’s meta-evaluation serves as an input for the upcoming independent external review of its evaluations. The report focuses on aspects of credibility related to the rationale, focus, use of innovative methods, and various research design attributes as formulated in evaluation reports and their respective approach papers. Drawing on a set of 28 evaluations published from fiscal year 2015 to 2019, the meta-evaluation offers six major conclusions and suggestions based on a systematic review of evaluation scope, reliability, validity (including construct, internal, external, and data analysis validity), consistency, and the integration of innovative methods.Publication Monitoring and Evaluation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2004-09-01)Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of development activities provides government officials, development managers, and civil society with better means for learning from past experience, improving service delivery, planning and allocating resources, and demonstrating results as part of accountability to key stakeholders. Within the development community there is a strong focus on results, this helps explain the growing interest in M&E. Yet there is often confusion about what M&E entails. The purpose of this M&E overview is to strengthen awareness and interest in M&E, and to clarify what it entails. The M&E overview discusses: performance indicators, the logical framework approach, theory-based evaluation, formal surveys, rapid appraisal methods, participatory methods, public expenditure tracking surveys, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, and impact evaluation.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Anti-Corruption Policies and Programs : A Framework for Evaluation(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2000-12)The anti-corruption strategy the World Bank announced in September 1997 defined corruption as the "use of public office for private gain" and called for the Bank to address corruption along four dimensions: 1) Preventing fraud and corruption in Bank projects; 2) Helping countries that request Bank assistance for fighting corruption; 3) Mainstreaming a concern about corruption in Bank work; and 4) Lending active support to international efforts to address corruption. The menu of possible actions to contain corruption (in both countries and Bank projects) is very large, so the authors develop a framework to help assign priorities, depending on views of what does and does not work in specific countries. Their framework, based on public officials' incentives for opportunistic behavior, distinguishes between highly corrupt and largely corruption-free societies. Certain conditions encourage public officials to seek or accept corruption: a) The expected gains from undertaking a corrupt act exceed the expected costs. b) Little weight is placed on the cost that corruption imposes on others. In a country with heavy corruption and poor governance, the priorities in anti-corruption efforts would then be to establish rule of law, strengthen institutions of participation and accountability, and limit government interventions to focus on core mandates. In a country with moderate corruption and fair governance, the priorities would be decentralization and economic reform, results-oriented management and evaluation, and the introduction of incentives for competitive delivery of public services. In a country with little corruption and strong governance, the priorities might be explicit anti-corruption agencies and programs, stronger financial management, increased public and government awareness, no-bribery pledges, efforts to fry the "big fish," and so on.Publication Reducing Poverty by Closing South Asia's Infrastructure Gap(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-12)Despite recent rapid growth and poverty reduction, the South Asia Region (SAR) continues to suffer from a combination of insufficient economic growth, slow urbanization, and huge infrastructure gaps that together could jeopardize future progress. It is also home to the largest pool of individuals living under the poverty line of any region, coupled with some of the fastest demographic growth rates of any region. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of people living on less than US$1.25 a day in South Asia decreased by only 18 percent, while the population grew by 42 percent. If South Asia hopes to meet its development goals and not risk slowing down, or even halting, growth and poverty alleviation, it is essential to make closing its huge infrastructure gap a priority. But the challenges on this front are monumental. Many people living in SAR remain unconnected to a reliable electrical grid, a safe water supply, sanitary sewerage disposal, and sound roads and transportation networks. This region requires significant infrastructure investment (roads, rails, power, water supply, sanitation, and telecommunications) not only to ensure basic service delivery and enhance the quality of life of its growing population, but also to avoid a possible binding constraint on economic growth owing to the substantial infrastructure gap.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Exchange Rate and Inflation Dynamics in Zambia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-06)This paper investigates the dynamics between the exchange rate and consumer price inflation in Zambia. The analysis uses a structural vector autoregression, with quarterly data for 1995-2014 and a combination of short-run sign- and zero-restrictions to identify relevant global and domestic shocks. The findings suggest that the pass-through of exchange rates to consumer prices depends greatly on the shock that originally caused the exchange rate to fluctuate. Although the price of copper is the most important driver of the exchange rate, the fluctuations it caused are associated with a low pass-through of only about 7 percent. Exchange rate fluctuations caused by monetary shocks come with a pass-through of up to 25 percent. Food inflation is equally affected by genuine exchange rate shocks, but appears more reactive to changes in copper prices or the money supply. Historical variance decomposition shows that, across periods, the main drivers of exchange rate fluctuations varied substantially.Publication Global Investment Promotion Best Practices 2012(Washington, DC, 2012-04)Global flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) declined severely during the recent economic and financial crisis. As the crisis eased, recovery in world economies spurred a resurgence of FDI, and that in turn reignited competition for investments among host countries. Especially in emerging markets, governments long have prized FDI as a source of much-needed capital and jobs. But in the 21st century, governments value FDI as much or more as a source of technology and know-how. Policymakers have witnessed how knowledge brought by foreign investors can spill over to local firms, bolster skills in the local workforce, and thus increase the overall competitiveness of their economies. To foster development of intellectual capital as well as businesses and jobs, governments increasingly recognize the importance of cultivating FDI. Providing business and investment climate information is a crucial component of IPI activities in all economies. But IPIs can gain particular advantage in those settings where investors find it most difficult to obtain reliable information and meet bureaucratic requirements. Research shows, for example, that investment promotion is more effective in economies where English is not an official language, and in economies that are more culturally distant from the investors corporate homes. Investment promotion also has more impact in countries with less effective governments and in economies that erect more barriers to launching a business (such as more time to obtain a construction permit). In this 2012 edition, GIPB focuses specifically on information provision in two sectors, tourism and agribusiness. This focus should be of particular use to economies that seek or are considering seeking FDI in those sectors.