Session Summary:
Over the past decade, in a context of shrinking program resources and increasing emphasis on accountability, public and not for profit sector organizations have come under increasing scrutiny and pressure to demonstrate that funds are being used efficiently and effectively. This has affected domestic as well as international organizations and their programs, which are expected to demonstrate better value for money.
In this context, evaluation has taken on an increasingly important role in assisting governments and international organizations alike in reviewing the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and impacts of their programs. However, learning from evaluations is frequently more accepted in theory than in practice; evaluators tend to report the same lessons learned evaluation after evaluation, raising questions about if, how, when and why evaluation findings and recommendations get used inside and outside such organizations.
On May 12 a panel consisting of Goberdhan Singh, Director General, Evaluations, Strategic Policy and Performance Branch, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Stephen Kester, Director, Evaluation Division, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada (DFAIT) Shravanti Reddy, Evaluation Specialist, UN Women, and chaired by Geraldine (Gerry) Cooney, Senior Evaluation Consultant, Universalia share experiences in encouraging and supporting the effective use of evaluation findings and recommendations in government and international organizations. They identify the role that CAIDC members can play in supporting the greater utilization of evaluation results in their consulting activities.
Speakers:
Geraldine Cooney - Chair: Senior Evaluation Consultant, Universalia
Ms. Geraldine (Gerry) Cooney is an owner and a senior evaluator in Universalia, a 30 year old Canadian evaluation consulting firm with offices in Montreal and Ottawa. Gerry manages the firm’s Monitoring and Evaluation Practice as in Ottawa.
A senior program evaluator, with over 30 years of experience, she has over 15 years of experience in leading and managing evaluations of large and complex projects, programs, and organizations in a variety of sectors (including education, health, private sector development, HIV/AIDS, Gender equality, good governance and the environment) in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean and South America for Canadian government departments, bilateral and multilateral development agencies as well international, regional and national non governmental organizations and civil society organizations.
Gerry has been the Chair of the Canadian Evaluation Society’s National Capital Chapter since 2008, which is the largest and oldest CES Chapter in Canada with approximately 550 members.
Goberdhan Singh - Speaker: Director General, Evaluations, Strategic Policy and Performance Branch, Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA
Goberdhan Singh is currently Director General of Evaluation at the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Since joining the Agency in 1981, he has served in different parts of CIDA in a variety of capacities such as Senior Policy Analyst, Program Manager for the East Africa Program, Evaluation Manager, and, more recently, Director of Evaluation. He has been a member of the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate’s Network on Development Evaluation since 2000.
Mr. Singh is also a member of the Canadian evaluation community of practice, made up of the Heads of Evaluation from the Federal Government Departments and the Canadian Evaluation Society. Under his leadership, the evaluation function of CIDA has been re-positioned to add better value to the Agency’s work. Besides managing numerous CIDA-only evaluations, he has participated in joint evaluation initiatives such as the Peer Review of the Evaluation Function of UNICEF (2006), the Joint Evaluation of General Budget Support (2006), the Joint Evaluation of External Support to Basic Education (2003), the Joint Evaluation of the Implementation of the Comprehensive Development Framework Principles
(2003).
He is currently leading the work, initiated by Canada, on developing a new approach for jointly evaluating the effectiveness of multilateral partners, and is participating in the steering committees for the Joint Evaluation of the Paris Declaration (phase 2) and the Multi-donor Evaluation of Support to Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities in Southern Sudan.
Stephen Kester - Speaker: Director, Evaluation Division, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, DFAIT
Stephen Kester is the Director of Evaluation at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He has been with the department since 2002. Prior to entering the Public Service, Stephen worked extensively in the field of international development using his knowledge of program evaluation, results-based management and performance measurement for program improvements. He worked in Sri Lanka for five years as the Program Advisor to the Sri Lanka Canada Development Fund and for seven years with an Ottawa based Canadian NGO.
Stephen holds a Master in Business Administration from McGill University and a Bachelor of Arts from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.
Shravanti Reddy - Speaker: Evaluation Specialist, UN Women
Shravanti Reddy is an Evaluation Specialist at UN WOMEN Headquarters in New York. She focuses on managing corporate evaluations and supporting evaluation processes in the field in Arab States and Africa region. She is a member of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG) Taskforce on Human Rights and Gender Equality, which recently developed a Handbook on How to Integrate Human Rights and Gender Equality in Evaluation. Prior to UN WOMEN, she worked in the UNICEF Evaluation Office on the Gender Mainstreaming Self-Assessment and the UNEG Training Course on Evaluation. She has also worked in various NGOs dealing with human rights, women’s rights and gender equality issues in the USA, Zimbabwe and India. She has a MA in International Affairs from Columbia University.