Handbook - Developing Partnerships with Non-OECD Economies - Section 2.1

2. EVALUATION AND IMPACT

2.1 Principles of Evaluation

The purpose of evaluation is to collect information on an ongoing basis to improve our events and to attempt to measure the impact of the OECD programme of co-operation with Non-OECD Economies.  Although the OECD tax partnership programme could have a number of significant impacts, it is difficult, firstly, to measure the impact and, secondly, to attribute the impact as an outcome of the tax partnership programme. 

2.1.1 Potential Impact of OECD Programme

Figure 1 summarises the potential benefits that experts and participants and their countries can derive from CFA’s partnership programme.   

From the perspective of the NOEs, the dialogue and experiences shared during an event should be accumulated and further disseminated within the NOE finance ministries and tax administrations.  The key to the impact of the programme is that these will in due course be transformed into more concrete policy developments, legislative changes, and developments in tax administration.  Any positive changes in tax policy and administration in the NOE jurisdictions will in turn have flow on benefits for the OECD member countries’ government and international businesses. 
The OECD member countries also benefit directly and indirectly from the OECD events through their direct involvement in providing experts to participate in the partnership events.  New skills and information obtained and/or bilateral contacts made by these experts at the events can directly impact their own and their colleagues’ work approaches.  The new information obtained can in turn have a positive impact on policy, legislative and administrative developments in the OECD countries.  Furthermore, improved bilateral contacts between tax officials from different countries and a better understanding of different approaches to international taxation problems developed from participation in the partnership events will provide a strong foundation for resolving potential tax disputes between member countries and NOEs. 

2.1.2 Measuring the Impact of OECD Programme

Although the tax partnership programme has significant impacts in a number of contexts, it is not always easy to accurately measure these, given the other factors involved in legislative and administrative developments.  Nevertheless numerous evaluation procedures are used to obtain feedback to help improve the partnership events and to monitor their impact. 
To capture the impact of taxation outreach events, the outreach programme is subjected to regular evaluations in different forms and at different times as indicated below: 

Events organized by the OECD are subject to rigorous evaluation by the experts and participants immediately after the event based on survey instruments developed by OECD and the Independent Evaluation Services (IES) consisting of Canada and the United Kingdom.  The purpose of this evaluation process is to obtain feedback from those involved directly in the program delivery with a view to improving the effectiveness and to maximize the impact of the partnership events. 
The surveys of past experts, past participants and their line managers are intended to bridge the gap between the immediate feedback we receive from post event evaluation carried out by IES and the longer term feedback we obtain from the macro surveys.  The results of these surveys will help us understand if experts and participants (and in turn their countries) have benefited from their participation in OECD events, for example, by improving their approaches to work based on experiences and information obtained at the event and through the bilateral contacts established during the event.
The end of event evaluation and follow up surveys of past experts and participants are further supported by periodic macro surveys which aim to ascertain concrete examples where tax legislation, policy and administrative approaches in the NOE partners have been influenced by CFA’s partnership activities and how these changes impact the OECD countries and international businesses in their dealings with the NOE partners.  In many instances, the partnership activities contribute directly to closer association to or the adoption of OECD standards and guidelines such as the OECD Model Tax Convention and the OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines by the NOE partners.