Adapting Evaluations during the COVID 19 Pandemic to develop forward looking Perspective

COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown and restrictions for a significant period of time has put forth a challenge for Development Evaluation sector, particularly in developing and emerging economies, including India. High dependency on traditional and manual/physical collection and access to data resources, be it interaction with different stakeholders or access to knowledge and resource centres for getting secondary data, makes evaluation exercise a challenging task for evaluation community in this region, during such times. Limited availability and use of technology; geographic spread and demographic profile of stakeholders including general population posed numerous challenges for conducting participatory and evidence based evaluations.

COVID-19 related restrictions however provided opportunities out of challenges to adapt, develop and implement evaluation techniques and tools, even though in limited scale. The proposed panel discussion will have evaluation professionals share their experience of carrying out evaluation related activities during this period and deliberate on learnings for future, without compromising with quality of evaluation and also ensuring optimal utilization of resources.