Belgium Evaluation Profile - Evaluation Systems Review 2016

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Belgium Special Evaluation Office (SEO) Evaluation Mandate The 2013 Law on Development Co-operation provides the mandate to the Special Evaluation Office (SEO) to undertake centralised evaluations. Decentralised evaluations are performed by the project or programme partners themselves, including the Belgian Development Agency (BTC). The SEO was established in 2003 and its mandate was amended in 2010 and 2014 by Royal Decree. The mandate includes: •

evaluating development interventions

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ensuring accountability

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building evaluation capacity in partner countries

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harmonising and certifying evaluation systems put in place by development partners responsible for the implementation of Belgian development assistance.

The Belgian Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) evaluation policy (2014) aims to encourage the measurement of development results and impact of Belgian co-operation (OECD 2015). There are plans to develop a new evaluation policy in 2016, which will build upon the 2014 version.

Responsibility and scope of activities The SEO has the sole responsibility for oversight of evaluation and for carrying out both strategic and policy evaluations. The SEO assesses and reports on Belgian development aid to provide decision makers with actionable recommendations to improve future choices and strategies for development co-operation.

The conclusions and recommendations of evaluations are aimed primarily at policy makers, including the Minister of Development Co-operation, the Directorate General for Development Co-operation (DGD), as well as heads of governmental and non-governmental co-operation. Evaluation findings on the implementation of development co-operation policy and resource allocation are reported to the Parliament and general public on the implementation of development co-operation policy and resource allocation.

The SEO prepares an annual report for the Belgian Parliament on its work as well as its main findings on Belgian development co-operation assessed during the year. It also summarises and analyses management responses to the specific evaluations conducted.

The Belgium Development Agency (BTC) conducts project/programme evaluations at centralised as well as project level and it is the responsibility of SEO to assess the independence, credibility and usefulness of the reports produced by BTC. SEO and BTC consult on a regular basis to put this responsibility into practice (DGD 2014).

Organisational Structure and Reporting Lines The SEO is part of the Federal Public Service (i.e. ministry) of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Co-operation. It falls under the administrative authority of the President of the Management Committee (Secretary-General) however the SEO is structurally independent (OECD, 2010). The SEO is led by the Special Evaluator, who has financial delegation to contract the expertise required for achieving credible evaluations. The Special Evaluator has to be filled externally and is appointed for a period of three years. Upon contract end, the Evaluator is not permitted to take up another position within the organisation.

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Central/main evaluation units Reporting line

Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Co-operation Chairman of the Management Board

Special Evaluation Office Evaluation policy and management of strategic evaluations of all federal ODA

High level policy groups or ministries Lines of communication

Belgian Federal Parliament Chamber and Senate Commissions for Foreign Affairs

Minister of Development Co-operation Transmitsthe Special Evaluators' annual report to Parliament with or without comments

For each evaluation, a reference group is established, composed of the main stakeholders. This reference group is responsible for: commenting on the methodology and the intermediary and final evaluation products; controlling the quality of the evaluation process; contributing to the dissemination of evaluations.

Types of Evaluation The Belgian evaluation policy and work is aligned with OECD DAC principles and quality standards.

• Thematic evaluations • Sector-wide evaluations • Country evaluations • Policy/strategy evaluations

Resources The SEO consists of five full-time professionals, including the Special Evaluator, reduced from ten in 2010. The Office has a separate budget line, outside the DGD budget, to ensure that it has adequate financial resources. This budget covers centralised evaluations for which the budget has remained roughly the same for the last five years. The Service’s expenditure is planned every year and is entered in the development co-operation budget as two separate basic allocations: SEO operational expenses and funding of joint evaluations. The FPS Foreign Affairs seconds the personnel that are needed to fulfil SEO’s mandate to the Special Evaluator (DGD 2014).

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Snapshot of evaluation resources Belgium

Head / Director / Assistant Director

Professional evaluation staff

Administrative / Support staff EUR 1 500 000 0.10% of the ODA budget 4

Evaluations produced per year (2015)

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Principles of Evaluation Independence In order to secure the quality and credibility of its assessments, the SEO is established as a separate unit whose operational independence is secured by an independent budget. The Special Evaluator reports to the Parliament via the Minister of Development Co-operation.

The SEO uses external consultants recruited by a public tender to carry out the evaluations.

The Office defines the scope of the evaluation, draws up the specifications and monitors the quality of the evaluation process. Assessment teams are mixed and include local experts, if possible (DGD 2014, DGD 2015).

Transparency and participation In order to improve transparency to the general public and stakeholders, DGD has initiated a range of activities. In 2011, a governmental open data portal was launched followed by a commitment to publish to the International Aid Transparency Initiative Standard by 2014. Transparency and communication is practiced before, during and after evaluation.

Evaluation reports and the management responses are disseminated to stakeholders and the general public routinely through the official website, internal circulation via intranet/ email and internal synthesis reports, as well as external circulation to development partners.

The current management response mechanism can be considered to be an informal one as there is not yet a consolidated procedure. The SEO prepares an annual report for the Minister of development that includes a synthesis of the results of evaluations conducted during the previous year, as well as a summary of the management responses to these evaluations. The report of the Special Evaluator needs to provide an insight into the implementation of recommendations of previous evaluations.

Competence and capacity building Participation in regular seminars and training courses are supported by financial resources so that staff can update their knowledge. Staff training at DGD is planned for annually and includes some joint training with BTC, which has a positive influence on collaboration and a common vision of development co-operation.

Co-ordination with donors and country recipients The SEO regularly participates in joint evaluations supported by the specific budget allocated for this activity. Local stakeholders, partners and beneficiaries in partner countries are mainly involved through briefings and debriefings during evaluation field missions.

Knowledge management The governmental open data portal is one of the tools to communicating the results from the work of DGD, SEO and BTC to the general public. In addition to this, annual reports are published synthesising findings from the evaluations performed. A recent reorganisation (2012) of the DGD by the Belgian Government included an increased strategic focus on strengthening the Directorate-General’s role as a decision-making and knowledge centre for development co-operation. One of the seven objectives in DGD’s management plan is to become a knowledge centre in order to support the effectiveness of projects and programmes (DGD 2014).

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Quality assurance The evaluation policy recognises that the credibility of evaluations is largely determined by the availability of reliable data. The SEO supports implementing partners and bodies, including BTC, in developing and introducing instruments for monitoring and collecting data on interventions, specifically the collection/production of reliable primary and secondary data.

A new internal quality control office was established at the DGD in 2012 to support the results-based and evaluation culture. The service assists in the development of skills, evaluation methods and instruments, in order to realise within the Directorate-General the concepts of quality improvement and results-oriented management. The service also ensures quality control of the reports and evaluation systems of the partners of the Belgian development co-operation.

Note to reader: The section at the beginning of Part II entitled “Introduction and key for the member profiles� provides explanatory notes on the profiles.

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