At Plantagenet I am currently involved in a large number of evaluations - mainly through other consultancy companies. The reason - apart from the fact that I am good at it - is that a large chunk of European Funding comes to an end in June 2008, and funding and delivery agencies are having to make sure they have evaluated how they have spent the money. I don't know if it is the same across Europe, but in the UK they are keen to tick all the boxes and demonstrate they have done what is required.
These final evaluations are interesting as they show how the project or programme developed and how well the aims and vision of the work was delivered. Ideally they are the moment to sit back and reflect that the lives of so many people have been affected for the better in some way. In addition they can identify what worked best in delivery terms so that next time there is a purchasing round, people know what to look for.
I prefer this in many ways to the formative and interim evaluations where you are following a project as it runs, identifying what is going well and trying to get things that are not going so well sorted out.
Where things get a bit scary is where determining the difference between a final evaluation and an audit. From the audits that have been done to me, it seems that you are looking for the things that don't add up, the things that weren't valid and need to be repaid, tracking the missing paperwork, identifying the gaps. My brother used to do some of this in his role as a loss adjuster, and said it could be fascinating when you knew there was a problem, but dull if done for too long.
With an evaluation, I like to be able to follow the process that a project or programme has taken - follow the story if you like. I also like to be able to delve into the figures on inputs and outputs to put a numeric story to it - and this is where my skills are mainly focused and is what gets close to auditing I suspect. But for me the bit that makes evaluation a nice type of project, is the chance to go out and speak to delivery agents and similar and hear the stories of where things have worked. I can't give examples here - mostly these things are very close to the project's aims and very personal - but they do give you a warm and fuzzy feeling when you are writing up the final report.
Do auditors feel warm and fuzzy when they have found a mistake or when they can find no issues with a project? I guess that depends on the auditor.
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