Session 6: Evaluating Relevance in a Changing World: Lessons from Applying the Revised OECD DAC Criterion in German Development Evaluation with Martin Noltze

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📌 Session 6: Evaluating Relevance in a Changing World: Lessons from Applying the Revised OECD DAC Criterion in German Development Evaluation

🗣 Speaker: Martin Noltze 

📅 Date and Time: 30 September 2026 | 14:00 CET

About the topic: Relevance is one of the core OECD DAC evaluation criteria, but also one of the most conceptually and methodologically challenging to apply in practice. In a changing policy and development landscape, questions of relevance go beyond whether an intervention aligns with needs and priorities at a given moment. They require evaluators to consider whose needs matter, how priorities evolve over time, and how interventions remain appropriate in contexts shaped by uncertainty, crisis, institutional change, and shifting policy agendas. 

This EvalVoices session will explore how the Relevance criterion is understood and applied in evaluation practice. Drawing on recent experiences from German development evaluation, the session will reflect on conceptual and methodological lessons from both project-level and strategic evaluations. It will invite EU colleagues, evaluation commissioners, and practitioners from the wider evaluation community to consider how relevance can be assessed in a thoughtful, credible, and context-sensitive way. 

The session will offer practical reflections on how evaluators can move beyond a narrow or static understanding of relevance and instead examine the criterion as a dynamic lens for understanding the fit between interventions, stakeholder needs, policy priorities, and changing contexts. It will be of particular interest to those commissioning, managing, or conducting evaluations in international cooperation and public policy settings.

About the Speaker: Martin Noltze is a senior evaluator and team manager at the Competence Center for Methods at the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval). With 20 years of experience in evaluating international development cooperation, Martin works on the advancement of evaluation methods, standards, and criteria. At DEval, he is responsible for thematic evaluations in the areas of climate, environment, and sustainability. His methodological focus includes meta-evaluations and evidence syntheses, rigorous impact evaluations, and theory-based evaluation. 

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