5. Various
This paper provides a synthesis of lessons from evaluations of public financial management (PFM) support by ADB, other multilateral development banks, and the International Monetary Fund, as well as lessons from research and analysis by other international organizations such as the World Health Organization. It draws upon experience from past crises, and from previous budget support operations targeted at medium-term PFM reforms, emphasizing the lessons they offer.
International Finance Institutions’ Support to the Deployment of COVID-19 Vaccines in Low- and Middle-Income
Countries: 10 Lessons from Evaluation- African Development Bank
2020 witnessed unprecedented scientific progress in developing a vaccine to control the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This has led to the development of a range of effective vaccines spanning from traditional formulations to new ones, such as
the novel mRNA or DNA-based vaccines. Many international organizations have committed their support to ensuring that the
vaccines are deployed and administered as quickly as possible across the globe. This article comprises 10 lessons from evaluation.
Since January 2017, the Independent Evaluation Department (IED) has increased its focus on the safeguard aspects of sovereign and nonsovereign operations. Extracting and documenting these lessons in synthesis notes are now a part of IED’s knowledge sharing. This is the fifth in a planned series of retrospectives that focus on lessons learned. Its purpose is to provide a snapshot of observations and lessons from ADB’s safeguard work for sovereign operations projects that were validated by IED in 2018–2019. The focus of this note is on project categorization and ADB’s safeguard work quality to provide useful lessons for future operations. This synthesis note is based on micro data from project validations conducted during the specified two-year period and is not intended to provide an all-encompassing assessment of ADB’s safeguard performance.
Program data: the silver bullet of the humanitarian and development sectors? - Cart-ONG
This study carried out by Cart-ONG provides a pnorama of the practices and needs of francophone CSOs in terms of data management.
Mirroring our society, the Humanitarian Aid and International Development (HAID) sector is in the throes of a digital revolution. Whilst the latter is undeniably impacting day-to-day management of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) - whether in their administrative duties or in those related to fundraising - it is also generating radical changes in actions being implemented for the benefit of populations.
Although it has become a key element in the coordination of operations, data management remains somewhat invisible from the perspective of the sector, in spite of its many ethical, financial and human implications, and above all its impact on project quality. In the field and at headquarters, project teams are therefore devoting an increasing amount of time to data management, often at the expense of other activities. Poorly trained and ill-equipped, these teams can produce substandard performances with regards to these tasks, and without the topic necessarily being regarded as an operational issue by most CSOs. Program data management - also known as Information Management (IM) - is both a topical issue and the source of numerous debates within francophone Humanitarian Aid and International Development CSOs.
SADC Research Challenge - JET Education Services
As an educational research agency with a non-profit motive, JET Education Services, along with the UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa (ROSA) and partners from the Global Challenge Research Fund’s Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures Project (South African node), as well as the Open Society Foundations (OSF), organised the “SADC Researchers Challenge”, which took place in May and June 2020 and involves a wide range of universities located in SADC countries.
The main purpose of the Challenge was to contribute to the generation of evidence on how education and training systems in SADC are affected by, and can respond to, COVID-19, while providing an opportunity to young researchers in the SADC countries to grow. Outputs from the challenge are a series of six reports and infographics around the following themes:
Theme 1: Education for sustainable development: COVID-19 education response intersections with the food, water and economic (livelihoods) crisis
Theme 2: Teacher preparation for distance learning during major disruptions
Theme 3: Exploring Lives of the Excluded Youth amidst COVID-19
Theme 4: Exercising global citizenship amidst COVID-19
Theme 5: Green skills for sustainable livelihoods in a post-COVID-19 context
Theme 6: Curbing the spread of fake news in Southern Africa - what we can and cannot do
Listening in the time of COVID-19 - 60 Decibels
60 Decibels comes with a COVID-19 Dashboard, to understand the impact of the crisis on the people most likely to be affected. Having spoken to 23,268 people in 19 countries they track how this crisis affects them over time to identify their most urgent needs both now and in the future.
Six months in: COVID-19 impacts on conflict - Implications for the sustainable development goals
Summary of an online panel discussion hosted by the APPG on the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, in collaboration with Mercy Corps, ground-truthing COVID-19 impacts on conflict so far. A follow-up conversation is planned in a few months' time.
Next steps for the World Bank’s new strategy for fragility, conflict and violence: what does the evidence say? - Stephan R. Wegner
The World Bank Group launched its first strategy specifically focused on fragility, conflict and violence (FCV) situations last week. With almost two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor projected to live in FCV countries by 2030, addressing their specific challenges is critical to advance the Bank’s twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
The adoption of the new strategy is an opportunity to share lessons about how to engage in fragile environments and have a lasting impact. As the Bank Group sets the new FCV strategy into motion, the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) offers the following evaluative evidence to inform specific actions the World Bank Group can take to ease the transition from theory to practice.
Conflicting Results: Measuring outcomes in situations of conflict - Lauren Kelly, Daniel Nogueira-Budny and Jeff Chelsky
In conflict-affected situations, sometimes just “keeping the lights on” can be considered a success. In these situations, important outcomes can be achieved by simply maintaining development gains. But these “successes” can be missed by performance tracking systems that are designed to measure the results of development assistance under normal conditions.
Disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic
Evaluation is about gathering and analysing relevant evidence; and disinformation is a threat to political dialogue and social dynamics, but also to evaluation.
In this reading list, the EU Council Library includes references to a number of resources on disinformation about Covid-19 and to the history of disinformation; an excellent reading for evaluators in times of global crisis!
Reflections is a series of lessons learned based on evaluative evidence. These brief papers aim to satisfy the broader request from UNDP managers to help them identify what works and what doesn’t, and in what contexts. The first edition of Reflections focuses on UNDP support to health systems, governance, economic revitalization, and social protection.
An estimated $15.9 trillion has been mobilised to respond to the health and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of this has gone to multilateral and bilateral funders to support low- and middle-income countries’ (LMIC) governments. But how is this money being spent, and how is it impacting country budgets and expenditure more broadly?
The GEF responses to crisis. What can we learn from evaluation? - IEO
The COVID-19 pandemic affirms the inextricable link between the broader ecosystem in which we live and human health. Human activities have substantially expanded into previously undisturbed domains, destroying landscapes, fundamentally altering the interactions between animals and humans, and affecting the dynamics of pathogen transmission (Berardelli 2020). By encroaching into ecosystems we have never been exposed to before, we let new viruses enter our population.
DEval’s corona blog for evidence-based development policy
Controlling the coronavirus pandemic in the countries of the Global South requires evidence-based development policy. If we want to develop effective strategies and measures to combat the spread of Covid-19, we need scientifically substantiated debates, multidisciplinary exchange and flexible planning. In the corona blog named + Evidence, national and international experts from the areas of evaluation and development research present their findings and views concerning the evidence available for more effectively controlling the coronavirus pandemic in the countries of the Global South.
Evidence from past interventions during global or regional crises has shown that not all well-intended actions are effective. What is most important, and at the same time most challenging, is striking the right balance between quick and flexible responses on the one hand, and coordination, quality planning and context-sensitivity on the other hand.
Efforts should be informed by lessons from the past, including the plentiful evidence from evaluations of other relief efforts. Moreover, the authors strongly recommend that all upcoming humanitarian and development assistance responses be accompanied by high-quality results monitoring, evaluation and research. Ignoring past evidence and failing to invest in generating credible new evidence about what is and is not working, in which contexts and for whom, may well cost lives.
Behavior and coping strategies during COVID 19 – A study on impacts - Rashmi Agarwal
The Corona pandemic has seriously affected the wellbeing of people, economies, lives and livelihoods in almost all nations. The consequences are turning out to be catastrophic in their impact preventing the nations from achieving their development goals. This study draws lessons from past researches on behavioural theories and models applied to disease outbreaks and natural hazards, and on impacts of prolonged lockdowns or restricting movement on the human psychology and human behavior. It points to the importance of interventions influencing coping strategies, leading to wellbeing associated with psychological, sociological, environmental and economic consequences.
Evidence Matters. Towards equitable, inclusive and sustainable development - 3IE
The COVID-19 pandemic brings the importance of high-quality, timely and relevant evidence to the fore. Governments all over the world justify radical policies to control and manage the pandemic with reference to evidence.
While the default is to think that most policies and programmes are well-informed by evidence, in reality, most are not. It is not clear that efforts to address the current socio-economic crisis will be any different. There is a high-risk that in the rush to act, well-intentioned responses are focused on doing something, and a prevailing notion that we don’t have time to wait for or consider the evidence. But the stakes are higher than ever before and the case for evidence-informed action has never been higher.
Responding to the Novel Coronavirus Crisis – 13 Lessons from Evaluation
Besides the enormous human toll, the economic impact of cross-border transmission and the spread of emerging infectious diseases on tourism, trade, and productivity can reach billions of US dollars. As the world faces the daunting task of containing the spread of COVID-19 and treating the ill, past evaluations of the financial and technical responses from multilateral agencies including the Asian Development Bank to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and Avian Influenza provide some lessons on supporting countries during and after the critical phases of the outbreaks.
Responding to COVID-19: Lessons from Previous Support to Micro, Small, and Medium-Sized Enterprises
This synthesis note aims to extract lessons from the previous micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) operations of ADB and its development partners (including nonbank and private sector financial institutions) to help guide the design of future ADB operations in relation to the COVID-19 crisis. Lessons from past financing support provided to MSMEs to cope with the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis and the 2008–2009 global financial crisis have continuing relevance for the ADB support that may have to be considered both during the crisis and afterwards.