ABSTRACT
The final lesson has to do with evaluation itself: when and how evaluation is conducted makes a big difference in how useful—and how well used—the information is for improving development results. Without close interaction of policymakers and evaluators, development evaluation will gradually lose its relevance in the global system. Evaluating projects, programs, policies, or other activities in real time is not a new idea among evaluators. The recent global financial crisis put a premium on the speed of using evaluative findings. Each report suggests directions for future work, making the evaluations part of the dialogue on the underlying development issues. Real-time evaluation increases the timeliness and relevance of evaluation by going beyond its ex post, backward-looking roots. The evaluator then reviews and synthesizes existing evaluations or other studies to ascertain what evidence is available to provide insights into the likely results of the proposal.
