[ Letters to the editor ]

Uninformed foreign personnel

Debate,
E+Z/D+C 2/2009, S. 82f.

I was delighted to read the “response to criticism” by Zafrullah Chowdhury und Rafiqul Chaudhury. This came at a time when the grip by uninformed foreign personnel has become tighter still after the notorious imposition of structural adjustment and globalisation by IMF, World Bank and their lackeys who wield considerable power. These children of European Renaissance have moved far away from scientific approaches. The leaders of Gonoshasthaya Kendra, however, made excellent suggestions for research.

Debabar Banerji,
Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
New Delhi

Too many prejudices

Focus on evaluation
E+Z/D+C 1/2009

As the person responsible for evaluation at the foundation I work for, I looked forward to reading the D+C/E+C focus section on the subject of “measuring results” with a great deal of interest. After reading the journal, however, I have to say that you did not offer any new insights.

Evaluation is already struggling with too many prejudices. In an interview with Vinod Thomas of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group in issue 6/2008 of E+Z/D+C you said yourself: “In my experience, evaluators tend to be technocrats who diligently fill in their forms.”

This may be true of some of the people referred to; in general, however, evaluators are living up to far more demanding tasks today. To quote an evaluator with many years of experience: “The role of the evaluator has constantly evolved. It went from that of an external data collector, who simply took measurements, to a neutral observer, who took on the additional task of providing an independent description, and on to an arbiter, from whom a judgement was expected. It has now become the role of a moderator, whose task it is to negotiate self-reflection processes with those who are being assessed, and to formulate consensus on what needs to change. Evaluations these days still contain aspects of all four roles but the intensity and the relationship to one another varies, depending on the commission.”

In short, I would like to ask you not only to deal with the subject of performance assessment, impact measurement and evaluation on a regular basis, with the aim of offering your readers a realistic picture of the problems, but also to give practitioners more say.

Dr. Norbert Eschborn,
Konrad Adenauer Foundation

D+C, 2009/04, Debate, Page 174