Overview of the DAC Quality Standards for Development Evaluation

The DAC Quality Standards for Development Evaluation

The DAC Quality Standards for Development Evaluation / Normes de qualité pour l’évaluation du développement provide a guide to good practice in development evaluation. They are intended to improve the quality of evaluation processes and products and to facilitate collaboration. Built through international consensus, the Standards outline the key dimensions for each phase of a typical evaluation process: defining purpose, planning, designing, implementing, reporting, and learning from and using evaluation results.

The Standards aim to improve quality and ultimately to strengthen the contribution of evaluation to improving development outcomes. Specifically, the Standards are intended to:

• improve the quality of development evaluation processes and products,
  
• facilitate the comparison of evaluations across countries,
  
• support partnerships and collaboration on joint evaluations, and
  
• increase development partners’ use of each others’ evaluation findings.

The draft Standards were approved for a three-year test phase in 2006 and have been revised based on experience. A range of development partners have contributed to this process, including donors and partner countries. Initial input was provided during a workshop in New Delhi in 2005. A 2008 survey of the use of the Standards, a 2009 workshop held in Auckland and comments submitted by the members of the DAC Network on Development Evaluation, helped to improve and finalise the text, with support from the Secretariat of the OECD. The Standards were approved by the DAC Network on Development Evaluation on 8 January 2010 and endorsed by the DAC on 1 February 2010.

Related Work:

Quality Standards for Development Evaluation: Learning and Accountability (New Delhi, India, April, 2005)

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