Report: Review of the use and utility of centralised evaluations

How strategic policy level evaluations are used – or are they used? The review assessed the use and utility of different types of evaluations, meta-evaluations and reviews carried out in 2015-2022.

The review found both strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths of the evaluation process

• Annual Evaluation Plans are prepared in a consultative manner
• Types of evaluations have become more diverse, e.g. reviews have been adopted for producing evaluative information
• Attention to coherence between development policy and foreign policy and/or trade policy has improved
• Outsourced Evaluation Management Service arrangement produces standard quality
• Opportunities for the MFA staff to participate in the evaluations exist
• Reports contain a lot of information and are of high technical quality

Weaknesses of the evaluation process

• The evaluations commissioned by the EVA-11 take approximately two years from the idea to results being available.
• Evaluation results have not always been available when needed.
• The reports are not appealing to potential users and sharing of evaluation results is not responding to stakeholder needs.
• Interested users of evaluations do not know where to find the evaluation reports and knowledge products.
• Past evaluations are forgotten too quickly
• The evaluations are not taken up in the Management Teams or by the Offices of the Ministers. Thus, the MFA leadership does not generate knowledge from evaluations.
• Management response is used for the uptake of evaluation results, but the process is not working well.
• Evaluation use and utility has focused on recommendations of evaluations with less emphasis on findings and conclusions.
• Evaluation culture is not fully developed across all departments in the Ministry.
• Focus on individual training and learning is not effective in fostering knowledge-based management in the Ministry

The review made six recommendations in order to enhance communication, information sharing, management response process and learning and to diversify evaluations.

Report

Review of the Use and Utility of Centralised Evaluations (in English, pdf, 71 pages, 2,01 mb)

PowerPoint presentation 

Final presentation 11.4.2023, Review of the Use and Utility of Centralised Evaluations (in English, pdf, 9 pages, 228 KB)

Report highlights

Review of the Use and Utility of Centralised Evaluations - Highlights (english, pdf, 2 pages, 233 KB)

The permanent address of the publication is

http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-281-732-7(Link to another website.)