The Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently launched a major evaluation of Dutch support for capacity development in 17 countries.
IOB carries out independent evaluations of policies and operations in all fields of development cooperation.
Recently, IOB launched an evaluation of Dutch support for capacity development that will result in a synthesis report based on a series of evaluations of the support for capacity development provided by seven organisations in 17 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The seven organisations are the Ministry of Health (Ghana) and six Dutch NGOs – Agriterra, the Netherlands Commission for Environmental Impact Assessment (NCEIA), the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD), Partos, PSO and SNV. Although these organisations work in different fields, they are all directly involved in promoting and supporting capacity development.
The evaluation is intended to respond to the need for knowledge and insights that will contribute to the future policies of the ministry, Dutch NGOs and their partners in developing countries. The evaluators will look at how and under what circumstances capacity has developed, and attempt to identify the factors that have influenced the effectiveness of the support provided by the Netherlands government and NGOs.
Open systems approach
Recognising that capacity is elusive and often transient, the evaluation will not use a predefined concept of capacity, and will regard organisations and networks as open systems with permeable boundaries. This approach, summarised in the diagram, will allow the evaluators to focus on how capacity has developed from within, rather than to look only at what outsiders have done to support and promote it.
The adoption of the open systems approach has significant methodological implications. In particular, the framework and the indicators used in each evaluation must be contextualised and related to the perspectives of both the Dutch and Southern partners with regard to capacity development. Thus the indicators and operational criteria will be determined in cooperation with local stakeholders. Southern partners will be fully involved in the evaluation process from the outset, whether as members of reference groups, as resource persons, or in conducting the fieldwork for each of the seven evaluations. In summary, the evaluation will underline the relevance of Southern partners’ views of and experiences with capacity development.
In the analytical framework shown in the diagram, the broad concept of capacity is divided into five core capabilities that every organisation and system possesses. None of these capabilities can by itself create capacity. They are strongly interrelated, and provide the basis for assessing a situation at a particular moment, after which the capacity of the system can be monitored and tracked over time in order to assess how it has developed.
The IOB will conduct the evaluation in collaboration with a network of partners:
- external advisors, including staff of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Utrecht University, Tilburg University and Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Southern advisors;
- facilitating organisations (methodology development, communication); and
- consultants based in the North and the South.
For each evaluation, a reference group and an evaluation team have been established, consisting of Northern and Southern members with a background in capacity development theory and practice.
The final synthesis report of the evaluation, which will be available in December 2010, will present the key findings and the lessons learned. Together with the more detailed reports on each of the seven organisations, it is hoped that the evaluation will make an important contribution to the international debate on capacity development.
Further reading
Engel, P., Keijzer, N. and Land, T. (2007) A Balanced Approach to Monitoring and Evaluating Capacity and Performance: A Proposal for a Framework. ECDPM Discussion Paper 58E. www.ecdpm.org/dp58e
De Lange, P. and Feddes, R. (2008) General Terms of Reference, ‘Evaluation of Dutch Support to Capacity Development’. IOB. View PDF
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