News from the Community

Reflections on the AES 2017 International Evaluation Conference: “Evaluation Capital”

Canberra, Australia

4–6 September 2017

There was a sense that we are living in dark times – more than one keynote speaker mentioned Trump, Duterte, a tightening of civil liberties here and overseas, and the growing refugee crisis. Evaluation has long posited itself as a public good, a means of overcoming authoritarian, arbitrary decision-making. But Sandra Mathison’s opening plenary challenged us to question our assumptions: “If we talk about evaluation making the world better, we have to own that claim.”

She was highly pessimistic in her judgement, but in the path she laid forward there was hope. The theme of the conference, ‘Evaluation Capital’ sought to examine the inherently political nature of evaluation. Sandra argued strongly that empowerment of the powerless was the key to depoliticising evaluation, and improving the longevity of evaluation as a sound tool for governance.

The theme of democratisation through evaluation shone strongly through the conference. This begins in the design of programs and evaluations. Many conversations at the conference, often led by the excellent work of the Design and Evaluation Special Interest Group, focused on using the beneficiaries of programs in designing interventions and evaluations.

Concepts such as ‘co-design’ and ‘human centred design’ are not buzzwords, but provide opportunities to deliver evaluations that further public good, democracy and empowerment. However, we must be mindful that tokenistic co-design can flourish in a political environment that tends to authoritarianism. Empowerment is not simply a means to an end, but an outcome in and of itself.

Reflecting on a session on LGBTIQA+ inclusion, we can’t assume that we as evaluators know what is best for people or even how they identify. Just as visibility through evaluation findings leads to action, invisibility leads to inaction. It’s important to allow people to find their own voice to ensure they are seen and heard, but also so they are seen, heard and interpreted as they want to be.

Understanding identity is inherently tied to the discourse of power and control, as was also emphasised in Dugan Fraser’s address. Richard Weston put this perfectly when he said that government needs to shift from being the ‘fixers’ to the ‘enablers’ of community needs. This will take more than the traditional top-down evaluation and partnership approaches that much have been to date. Communities and Indigenous evaluators must take the lead. As non-Indigenous evaluators working with Indigenous communities to design, implement and evaluate, we have to be explicit in the promises we make to stakeholders and the expectations we establish.

The keynote speakers were clear that the democratisation of evaluation enables evaluation to deliver outcomes that do more than simply collect evidence. For Richard Weston, recognising Indigenous systems of knowledge, and using them to tell stories, allows us to deliver evaluations that are genuinely healing for communities that have experienced trauma. For Andy Rowe, recognising the complexity of the world we live in will help us to deliver evaluations that address sustainability and the environmental challenges our world faces. For Nicholas Gruen and Gill Westhorp, though coming from very different disciplines, the agreement was clear that an understanding of context delivers evaluations that deliver valuable findings for beneficiaries in context, as well as commissioners and funders.

So the call to arms at the conference couldn’t have come at a better time, and I was heartened to see that the rally cry came from across the evaluation spectrum – commissioners, consultants, academics. We may be living in dark times, but we all want to be doing the kind of evaluation work that delivers better outcomes for society, not just program beneficiaries and commissioners. It is clear that those in Canberra already recognise the transformative power of evaluation, and the conversations will continue next year in Launceston.

Contributed by Joanna Farmer, Senior Consultant, Urbis.

The 13^th European Evaluation Society Biennial Conference: Evaluation for more resilient societies

1 – 5 October, 2018

Thessaloniki, Greece

#EES2018

The EES is excited to announce its 13th Biennial Conference from 1 to 5 October 2018 in Thessaloniki, Greece. The leading theme of the EES2018 Conference is “Evaluation for more resilient societies”. The Conference offers 5 days of debates on evaluation in times of financial, geopolitical, environmental and humanitarian crises.

After a decade of turbulence in Europe and the world, we need to focus on the contribution from evaluation. Crises, inherently, lead to change, positive and negative. What is the role of evaluation in understanding the multiple crises currently ongoing? Which are our collective responses? How can evaluation help make societies more resilient? Evaluation for resilient societies will be the leading theme of the EES2018 biennial conference. At the same time, the conference will provide the traditional opportunities for exchanging on evaluation politics, capacity, systems, research, methods, communication and use.

The EES will organise the Conference together with the Hellenic Evaluation Society in Thessaloniki, at the crossroads of continents, countries and cultures. Greece is also facing complex economic problems, while remaining on the frontline of Europe’s asylum and migration challenges. The very word crisis originates in Greek language, where it means judgment or decision. So evaluation and crisis go hand in hand. We need good krisis, good judgment and critical thinking, to overcome the crisis. We need evaluation to deal with crisis. Greece represents the perfect stage to debate how evaluation may help societies in Europe and beyond respond to the challenges of crises.