Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

OECD 1999
Country Assistance Strategies as a Management and Evaluation Instrument for Donors
– Early-warning pointers: An effective monitoring instrument should contain
pointers bearing on critical variables that might impair goal achievement,
and in this way contribute to an early identification of possible substantive,
time-related, or financial discrepancies. Information on the framework conditions,
counterpart institutions, and target groups in the projects to be undertaken,
on co-ordination of the various development co-operation
instruments, on conditions, etc. that are called for in the detailed presentation
of priority areas in a country concept fulfils this function precisely if it
constitutes not only planning references but also monitoring or early-warning
pointers. Each of these variables can lead to significant substantive, timerelated,
and financial divergences from initial planning. Country concepts
that do not contain any such information, or only in rudimentary form, are not
well suited as an instrument of effective planning and monitoring. The results
of the evaluation of country concepts led to a recommendation for additional
information on risk potentials in priority areas-a point well known from
project planning. This would improve the country concept’s suitability as a
monitoring instrument.
The evaluation function of the country concepts
While the BMZ guidelines for preparing and using country concepts specify the
latter’s function as a planning and management instrument, they fail to give an
explicit indication of the role that the country concepts can and should play in the
evaluation of country programmes, although this function is implicit. Therefore, it is
not surprising that the BMZ’s country concepts have not yet been used as an instrument
for systematically evaluating the corresponding country programmes of German
development co-operation.
The role of the country concepts in the evaluation of country programmes is
already mentioned in the standard evaluation procedure. Evaluations have to consider
the original goals and design of the undertaking being evaluated as one yardstick
and, at the same time, assess the appropriateness of the goals and design in
retrospect. Applied to country programmes (i.e. the sum of projects being implemented
in a partner country), this procedure necessitates evaluating the country
programme in the light of the programme goals and design formulated in the country
concept and, in addition, assessing the appropriateness of the goals and design
of the country concept. Hence the country concept is an essential yardstick and
frame of reference for the evaluation of a country programme and is at the same
time, subject to a critical assessment of its appropriateness.
To explain this idea more precisely, the basic evaluation issues defined in the
DAC Principles for the Evaluation of Development Assistance (see Box 8.3) can be
useful. In line with these, the role of the BMZ’s country concepts in the evaluation
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