Letter from the Secretary of State for
International Development responding to the annual letter from
David Peretz, Chair, Independent Advisory Committee on Development
Impact (IACDI) concerning DFID's Evaluation Policy
MR DAVID
PERETZChairman
Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact
(IACDI)
4 December 2009
Dear David,
Thank you for your letter of 2 December and
the IACDI report on the quality of evaluation in DFID. I welcome
the report, which sets an important benchmark for future progress.
Please convey my thanks to Roger Riddell on IACDI and to Burt
Perrin and Richard Manning.
As we set out in the Development White Paper,
the Government is committed to getting the best out of the resources
available for development and ensuring value for money. Evaluation
is an essential part of assessing impact, promoting transparency
and use of high quality evidence in decision making. I therefore
welcome the recommendations in the report, including those you
have highlighted as priorities in this letter.
The establishment of IACDI was a reflection
of DFID's commitment to strengthening evaluation across the organisation.
Evaluation should underpin our policies, our accountability to
UK taxpayers and to the citizens of developing countries in which
we work.
I am pleased to note that IACDI have endorsed
DFID's new evaluation policy published in June, and indeed it
benefited from your advice at various stages. The work now in
hand on implementation will strengthen evidence, evaluation management
systems, and internal capacity.
The Quality Review adds to this and is well
timed to inform work over the next two to three years. Your assessment
is that DFID's evaluation is on a par with its peers, which is
reassuring, but I agree with you that we can and should be aiming
higher. A management response which I have agreed, has been released
today by Richard Calvert, DFID's Director General of Corporate
Performance. It directly addresses your recommendations and reaffirms
our commitment to high quality independent evaluation, results
and value for money.
In addressing the recommendations, we will do
the following:
— DFID's Investment Committee will now
oversee the Department's response to evaluation findings. This
will provide leadership across the office and is an important
step in tackling the defensiveness your review has found in some
parts of the organisation.
— Lead directors responsible for management
responses to evaluation will ensure more accountable and responsible
actions. The continued active role that you and the Head of Evaluation
play in interacting with senior management, the Management Board,
and through other committees is important to integrating evaluation
in strategic decisions.
— The Annual Report of Evaluation will
reflect how evaluation contributes to development effectiveness,
and will function as an internal peer review mechanism on best
practice.
— DFID's investments over £1 million
are already subject to performance review and scoring, but we
are now looking at ensuring that at the design stage all DFID's
major investments include a framework for evaluation.
— As part of our commitments under the
Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action, we are promoting
better evaluation by our developing country partners. We are already
support capacity building on evaluation through DFID's overseas
offices, including in Uganda, Ethiopia and India. The UK plays
a leading role in the OECD-DAC evaluation network, 3ie and other
joint work (for example with the World Bank to develop regional
centres of excellence in monitoring and evaluation). We will continue
to give this priority and take a lead internationally.
You have again raised the issue of adequate
resources for evaluation. My priority is of course ensuring overall
value for money in how taxpayer resources are used. We have again
significantly increased funding this year for DFID's Evaluation
Department to deliver their role in implementing the new evaluation
policy and we will do our best to sustain that level of funding.
However, we are exploring whether it is possible to allow greater
flexibility in the use of programme resources for evaluation.
This in turn would allow us to consider use of programme for scaling
up decentralised evaluations.
On the seniority and reporting lines for the
Head of EVD, I am satisfied that the reporting line we put in
place last year, through the Director General for Corporate Performance
on the Management Board, is working well and provides good access
for Evaluation Department to the board. I am pleased that this
arrangement will be supported by the new role of the Investment
Committee, on which you have been a permanent observer, as well
as the frequent and high quality engagement the chair has with
your Committee.
Looking forward, I welcome your proposal to
focus on lesson learning in DFID in the year ahead and hope the
committee will play its role in keeping evaluation directed at
the strategic priorities for development. For DFID these are clearly
set out in our new White Paper and I note that many of these issues
(for example tackling climate change or helping to build peaceful
states) already feature in the work programme of independent evaluations.
I am copying this letter to Malcolm Bruce, Chair
of the International Development Committee.
Douglas Alexander
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