Interesting discussion. I agree incentives can be tricky and I have seen my fair share of bad evaluations and evaluation organisations with questionable practices. Some thoughts from me as an evaluator who has worked in a few different country contexts:
I think M&E is not just internal or completely external. A lot of times M&E orgs are hired to provide expert support and work alongside an organisation to develop an evaluation. M&E can be complex and it can really help orgs to have experts guide them through this process and clarify their thinking. And as you say when we have internal buy in we are more likely to see the findings taken up and actioned. When we only see M&E as an outside judgement commissioned by a funder with no input from the org being evaluated we make M&E out as antagonistic or adversarial which can be an unhelpful dynamic. I have seen orgs who have been unhappy with an external evaluation because they feel the evaluators made judgements when they didn’t fully understand the operating context (and how can they with often only a fly by visit to project locations) or did not properly take into account the values of the organisation or the community but rather only listened to the funder. This can be very disempowering and may not lead to positive changes.
I think many organisations do want to learn and improve but fear harsh judgement which is quite a natural, human response. I think bringing partners/orgs on board early, and establishing a pre-evaluation plan (see here) highlighting what your standards for evidence are and what actions you will take in response to certain findings before the evaluation is helpful. This also gives the organisation ownership over the evaluation results. I think it is important to frame your evaluation so that feedback can be taken on board in a culturally appropriate way. The last thing you want is for an organisation to feel harshly judged with absolutely no input or right of reply.
We speak like M&E is clear cut but M&E assessments often don’t come out fully positive or negative. A lot of evaluations occupy a messy middle. There is often some good things, some not so good things, some thing which we think are good or bad but we don’t have conclusive evidence. Sensemaking can be subjective as it often comes down to how you weigh different values or the standards you set for what good or bad look like. This can be different between the funder, the org, the community and the evaluators. For example if you find an education project is cost-effectively increasing test scores, but only for female students and not struggling male students what do you say? Is it good? Is it bad? Is this difference practically significant? Should the program be changed? What if changing this makes it less cost-effective? This comes down to how you weigh different values and standards of performance.
I agree with Dan and think integrity is a very important internal driver. While I agree with Nick that acting this way can be more difficult for local staff given the connections and relationships both professional and personal that they have to navigate, I don’t think integrity as an incentive is hard for them to compute, it is just harder for them to action. I don’t think the response should be that all evaluations should be done by non-local/international firms. This is highly disempowering, would drain local capacity, and again puts decision-making back in the hands of people often from high-income and supposedly ‘more objective’ contexts rather than building a strong local ecosystem of accountability, re-hashing problematic colonial power dynamics.
These kinds of dilemmas exist everywhere. Evaluation is always a tricky tightrope walk where you are trying to balance the rigour of evidence, the weight of different values, and the broader political and relational ecosystem so that what you say is actually used and put into practice to improve programs and impact.
Thanks so much for writing this Ezrah. I really appreciated your thoughtful reflections on how hard it can be for your moral compass to find a north when your whole world and that of your family and community has been turned upside down. You are right—peace is a necessary condition to do good. We shouldn’t forget this. Sending strength.