Evaluations need interdisciplinarity, speed, and communication

Last month, Svetlana Negroustoueva, the lead of the evaluation function at CGIAR, visited Washington, DC, to attend the 4th Conference on Evaluating Environment and Development, organized by the Independent Evaluation Office of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). While there, she took the opportunity to conduct in person key informant interviews with staff of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), one of CGIAR’s research centers, as part of a series of evaluations on science groups. Science journalist Alan Dove interviewed Svetlana about her trip; below is the edited transcript of their discussion.

Alan Dove (AD): What was the purpose of your trip to Washington, DC?

Svetlana Negroustoueva (SN): There was a dual purpose. First, it was to present and engage at the Conference on Evaluating Environment and Development, a very high-level global event for the evaluation profession organized by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) with partners. The conference was both a thematic and a professional one on environment, climate change, and related topics.

The second reason for my trip was to conduct in-person data collection for an ongoing real-time cluster evaluation on CGIAR science groups (ToRs). This was done at IFPRI, one of the CGIAR centers with headquarters in Washington, DC.