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Project

Designing evaluation and communication for impact for cyber policy centres – DECI-4
 

South America
South Asia
Project ID
109338
Total Funding
CAD 226,875.00
IDRC Officer
Ruhiya Seward
Project Status
Completed
End Date
Duration
24 months

Programs and partnerships

Networked Economies

Lead institution(s)

Summary

Numerous strategic evaluations have found that learning and communications are key to research for development interventions.Read more

Numerous strategic evaluations have found that learning and communications are key to research for development interventions. However, strategic learning and communications for development is challenging, and projects need adaptive strategies tailored to complex and changing contexts to ensure that research contributes to positive change in policy ecosystems. There is no blueprint for effective research for development, but it requires agility and forward thinking. This project provides organizational capacity building to help cyber policy centres (CPCs) improve their research impact by enhancing their capacities in evaluation, research communication, and adaptive management.

The CPC initiative supports organizational strengthening for a set of regional “think and do tanks” that specialize in public policy research at the forefront of artificial intelligence, data, and internet societies. Designing evaluation and communication for impact (DECI) is the principal mechanism for strengthening this group of institutions. The DECI-4 project combines evaluation, communication, and learning methods with mentoring throughout the project cycle. External evaluations have demonstrated that IDRC grantees benefit from having a learning partner and mentor who supports reflection, strategic planning, and adaptive management practices to help strengthen organizational development.

DECI-4 will also conduct a program-wide evaluation of the CPC modality to help IDRC assess the impact and effectiveness of the approach. As per its own approach to change, the CPC program has a set of assumptions that merit review and confirmation. The review will help IDRC understand how the support has led to organizational strengthening and it will identify expected and unexpected outcomes.

Research outputs

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Report
Language:

English

Summary

The DECI-4 project was implemented from January 2020 until June 2022 (the last six months being an extension). DECI-4 differed from its predecessors as it included two dimensions: a continuation of the support to CPC partners, and a program-wide evaluation of the CPC program modality. The CPC partners did not experience an interruption in the mentoring which utilized the DECI-3 methodology. DECI-3 had brought together a combination of evaluation, communication and learning methods, that provided institutional capacity development through just-in-time mentoring during the full project cycle. As noted, during DECI-4, the New Economy team continued mentoring CPC partners and implemented a program wide evaluation of the CPC program modality which began in September 2020. This second role meant working closely with the former IDRC/NE team in defining evaluation users, evaluation uses and key evaluation questions to identify lessons for future program-level planning and adaptation. While we hoped for some overlap with some of the CPC partner’s evaluation plans, but it did not take place. While there was the precedent of the DECI team directly implementing the RIA evaluation, that process was kept separate from its mentoring role. At the outset of this project, the DECI team began to clarify its dual role with the CPCs to ensure the two dimensions worked separately while continuing to look for areas of complementarity and shared learning.

Author(s)
Brodhead, Dal
Evaluation
Language:

English

Summary

This final evaluation of the Initiative was started in September of 2020 and completed in July 2021. A utilization-focused evaluation (UFE) approach was used as a decision-making framework. UFE places emphasis on primary intended users (PIUs) as the owners of the evaluation design; in this instance the PIUs were the staff of IDRC’s Networked Economies unit. The evaluation was designed and implemented by the DECI-4 project team in consultation with the PIUs.

Author(s)
Ramírez, Ricardo
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