New York University’s Aid Watch – What Would The Poor Say: Debates in Aid Evaluation
(USA) – A conference at NYU debated the issues surrounding aid transparency, accountability and evaluation, including the Director of Publish What You Fund, Karin Christiansen. You can see her presentation here.
William Easterly argued inadequate transparency, feedback and accountability mechanisms are undermining aid effectiveness.
Lant Pritchett argued naïve technocrat approaches to evaluation can produce the worst outcome for the poor. He sets out the need to an understanding of the political economy of policy making, and that evaluation approaches in development need move to real-time feedback loops rather than randomised trialling approaches. This little ‘e’ approach moves beyond just find the most cost-effective policy/program designs, but help to positively inform policy.