Locating evaluation and locating myself as an evaluator - EES Biennial Conference 2024

"Abbiamo un solo planeta" said the great art piece (in the photo) that I spotted in Parco Alcide Servi in Rimini on the last day of the EES Biennial Conference (September 27, 2024). We only have one planet, and while we were conferencing to make evaluation better together, the world on the planet yet again took turns to the worse. Does evaluation do anything to come to rescue? Of course it does - evidence-based decision making, accountability and learning together come from evaluation and could work marvels.

My three take-aways from the EES Biennial Conference in Rimini, 23-27 September 2024, come in the spirit of the conference’s name “Better Together: Collaborative thought and action for better evaluation” - we can and should make evaluation better to enhance its chances to help to make the world and planet better.

1.?????? For evaluation to be better and transformative (and to avoid “transformation-wash”), we must strive to drive futures thinking to be an integral part of evaluation through the various means of foresight. In the case of individual evaluations this means very different things though and our evaluability assessments should include assessing what – if any – foresight approaches and methods to use.

To get an overview of foresight in evaluation, see my dear friend Petra Mikkolainen 's great quick guide at https://www.niras.com/media/aiij30hu/mel_definitions.pdf . Petra’s guidebook was referred to in a number of EES sessions.

2.?????? Collaborative thought and action require framework and getting the basics right and navigating the landscape. Our community has frameworks, including the European Evaluation Society itself, but if I walked out of the EES biennial thinking that the conference would have benefited from more structure, does that not apply to evaluation as industry as well? Two domains within which groundwork is still required come to mind as priorities.

First is the age-old issue of confusing terminology within evaluation and overall policy and strategy work. Here, the word “outcome” seems like the culmination point of the confusion which is rather visible between what are the results we plan for and expect to achieve (ex-ante), vs. what results have we achieved (ex-post) and have evidence to show for. In many EES conference sessions, even in one of those full-day professional workshops that were intended for practitioners rather than beginners, clearly there was confusion in the room over this point. What does that confusion do to our assessment (and self-assessment as evaluators) of accountability? What does it do to our ability to work together?

Second, we need structure to both explore and understand what fits where in terms of evaluation approach, and – where appropriate – to bridge together elements that somewhat instinctively seem either “big evaluation” (most policy, thematic, global evaluations) or “small evaluation” (most project, programme, community evaluations). I really enjoyed Jyotsna Puri’s keynote “Translating evidence to action – the last frontier”, a strong testimony to the potentially transformative powers of large-scale meta-evaluation, if the development community takes action based on the quantitatively significantly evidenced findings. I put in my EES conference schedule a lot of gen-AI; efficiency; and systems thinking, and I also enjoyed discussions on Outcome Harvesting, Most Significant Change and Photovoice.

At the risk of stating the obvious, no one size fits all and it is for the evaluator, evaluation commissioner and – hopefully – stakeholders including rights-holders to take informed decisions on the approach and methodology. We should not over-crowd an evaluation but rather be focused and set appropriate boundaries so as to unearth all relevant evidence without unnecessary burdening stakeholders. The evaluation landscape is rich and navigation at the planning, design and inception of an evaluation is required to make the evaluation purpose and objectives and approach and methodology to meet and make us work better together.

3.?????? To make evaluation better together we indeed need decolonization, intersectionality and meaningful inclusion but how to get there.. like, really get there? A big part of what Zenda Ofir said in the keynote “Transforming Together” with Bagele Chilisa and Yvonne Pinto rather resonates with me. While I may not do justice to her messages, I would summarize one of them along the following lines: to make evaluation better and transform together, we should not gloss over our differences but rather acknowledge and say who we are – this would help to see and understand our biases and to really meet each other. My provenance? Privilege, yes, by having been born in an economically viable welfare state with democracy as the governing framework (Finland in 1970s’) as this allowed me to transform and work towards a desired individual life-level future scenario of moving away from the relatively (for the OECD standards) under-privileged childhood in which issues with making the ends meet, poor physical and mental health and abuse in the family played a significant role, and towards a “keep calm and serve the global community the best you can”-life that I have lived in my adulthood. I never talk about these things in my professional life but maybe I should, maybe we all should. My main bias (as far as one can see it herself)? Perhaps a too strong belief in the Nordic system of the recent past – it worked for me and many of my peers but while it is today a utopia, even if it was achievable, would it serve its purpose in the current global permacrises environment of VUCA[1]? ?

To discuss and work together around any of these points, contact me in LinkedIn or at [email protected] .

PS. My personal EES-goal was to locate myself within the evaluation community and this as well as some self-validation I managed. I hope these to also serve as stepping stones towards better evaluation together.

[1] volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiquity