Evaluating Country Programmes - OECD Online Bookshop

OECD 1999
Country Programme Planning and Country Programme Evaluation within SDC
– The draft is distributed to all involved parties and a consultation meeting is
organised where the Political Affairs Division (FDFA) provides its foreign policy
assessment.
– The document is cleared by the Geographical Division and submitted with
the minutes of the consultation meeting to different committees and directorates
outside SDC, and to other interested parties.
– The country programme is approved and signed by the SDC Director. Generally,
FOFEA considers the country programme a reference document. In
recent cases, the co-responsibility of a programme was assured by the cosignature
of the Director of FOFEA (e.g. Bolivia).
Linkage between planning and evaluation
The planning process is determined in the SDC guidelines. However, the way
to elaborate the final country programme document differs between the geographical
divisions according to their organisational culture. The different processes of
elaboration can be defined as follows:
– Elaboration by the co-ordinator/desk officer as a one-person-job (first “generation”
of country programmes).
– Elaboration by the team of expatriates at the co-ordination office.
– Further incorporation of the National Programme Officers (NPOs) and eventually
the project leaders.
– Incorporation of national opinion leaders and/or experts (view from outside).
– A process of linked participatory workshops.
These options for elaboration still coexist within SDC and are due to the historical
development of the different CPs. While some countries have already elaborated
their third country programme and can, therefore, count on a certain
continuity, others have only recently started this process (see Appendix 10.1).
Whether the issue of the country programme is continuity, reorientation or basic
policy decision has an influence on the methodologies chosen and leads to processes
which are adapted to the specific premises as well as to the context of the
country programme. However, there is also an aspect of distinct approaches (inductive
vs. deductive) existing in different geographical divisions, which influence the
choice of methodology (see Section 4 below).
All geographical divisions agree that the evaluation of the former country programme
is a necessary step in the planning of the next one. In most cases, a tendency
towards self-evaluation workshops can be noticed. This approach is
particularly strong in the West Africa Division where an involvement of the partners
in the evaluation as well as in the planning processes is a common practice. The
most evolved approaches in terms of linking participatory processes between
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