Preparing, Governing, and Managing the Paris Declaration Evaluation

Abstract

Joint or multi-partner evaluations are evaluations of development cooperation policies, programs, and projects in which different donors, development agencies, and partner countries participate. The complexities of a large number of diverse stakeholders and multiple units of analysis in joint evaluations pose significant governance and management challenges to ensure the evaluation’s independence, credibility, quality, and utility. This article reports how governance and management were structured and operated to facilitate the evaluation of the Paris Declaration. A common evaluation framework was established to facilitate synthesis. The integrity of national evaluations had to be ensured, including capacity-building and support as needed. National and international reference groups were established to ensure the engagement and buy-in of different stakeholder groups, including input and feedback to the core team that synthesized the results of the national evaluations. The article concludes with three important lessons about complex joint evaluations.