Basic Principles (old)

Under the Regulations for Financial Management in the State, all public entities are required to ensure that evaluations are carried out within their areas of responsibility. For development assistance, this requirement is further specified in the Instruction for the Evaluation of Norwegian Development Cooperation. The instruction builds on the Evaluation Strategy with Procedures and defines the objectives and standards for evaluation activities.

The objectives of evaluation are to ensure that evaluations are:

• Of high quality
• Credible and independent
• Relevant
• Useful for learning and knowledge use

Evaluations serve two related purposes:

• Learning: to generate knowledge that can inform improvements in future development assistance
• Accountability: to document whether expected results have been achieved

The balance between learning and accountability may vary from one evaluation to another.

Decisions on what to evaluate are based on the Regulations for Financial Management in the State. Prioritisation considers criteria such as materiality, risk and uniqueness.

All evaluations follow quality standards developed by the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).

These standards require that:

• Evaluations are carried out by external and independent professional evaluators
• Strict methodological and quality requirements are met, including transparency about data sources, methods and conclusions
• Key findings are verified through triangulation, and causal relationships are carefully assessed
• Relevant stakeholders are given the opportunity to share their views during the evaluation process.
• Any significant disagreements between stakeholders and evaluators are reflected in the final report.
• All evaluation reports are made publicly available.

A key challenge in evaluation is to assess causality. When significant changes are observed in a country or among a target group, it can be difficult to determine whether these changes are caused by development assistance.

Positive developments maybe also result from factors such as economic growth or improved governance. Likewise, negative developments do not necessarily mean that assistance has failed. In some cases, assistance may have prevented worse outcomes or contributed to unintended negative effects.

When the effects of assistance can be determined with reasonable certainty, this is referred to as attribution. Attribution analysis seeks to answer the question: What would have happened without the assistance? Such analysis can be resource-intensive and is often not feasible.

More commonly, evaluations assess whether assistance has contributed to observed changes. This approach, known as contribution analysis, examines whether it is plausible that assistance has played a role in the changes, while taking other influencing factors into account.

Evaluations serve two main and complementary functions:

• Control function: to assess whether measures have been implemented as agreed and whether the expected results have been achieved. This supports accountability for those managing development assistance funds.
• Learning function: to generate and systematise knowledge that can improve ongoing initiatives and inform the design of new ones, strengthening effectiveness over time.