How PIA works

Poverty Impact Assessment (PIA) helps donors and partner countries identify the intended and unintended consequences of their interventions. PIA provides a framework for improving baseline data and monitoring the impact hypothesis during implementation and inputs for ex post evaluations. It formulates recommendations for decision makers on how the intervention might be improved. Ex ante PIA is designed to harmonise approaches. It seeks to avoid both incoherent assessments created by competing methods and often-conflicting demands placed on partner governments.

PIA’s novelty is that it integrates already established approaches, their terminologies and procedures into one modular approach. The PIA consists of 5 modules. In each step the risks, monitoring needs and information quality are assessed and recommendations are made – based on evidence – on how the intervention can be improved.

Module 1: Poverty situation and relevance to national strategies and plans
Module 2: Stakeholder and institutional analysis
Module 3: Identification of transmission channels and overall results by channel
Module 4: Assessment of stakeholders’ and target groups’ capabilities
Module 5: Assessment of results on MDGs and other strategic goals

The PIA modules lead to a picture about possible poverty impacts of specific development projects or programmes. These projects can take place in all kinds of areas of development and need not specifically be directed towards the poor. PIA is a tool to then assess in how far the project does actually impact the poor. Although the tool has useful elements and forces one to think about a multitude of issues that otherwise might have slipped the mind, it is also based on very strong assumptions about linear relations between different situations. The tool asks you to predict poverty impacts based on very little information with little analytical tools. In academic terms, this tool wouldn’t be considered to be a very sound or solid tool for measuring poverty impact. Nevertheless, if it is used to force its users to think more in-depth about the project and its possible outcomes for the poor, it is certainly useful in its own right.

PIA is based on balancing qualitative and quantitative information to achieve a sound and reliable assessment. The level of detail can be determined by the needs of the organisation commissioning the PIA. This might be a quick exercise, based on already available data, or a longer, more detailed assessment, requiring greater consultation and research.

Ex ante PIA holds a number advantages over other forms of impact assessment:

• It provides a flexible methodology, which can draw on more intensive data collection and analysis where these are available. It also provides useful guidance in their absence.
• It is based on a simple framework and associated assessment procedures that build on existing methodologies and definitions. It is less demanding than poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA) in terms of data, time, personnel and financial resources.
• It complements rather than replaces other assessments during the appraisal process, such as log-frame analysis, cost-benefit/cost-effectiveness analysis or environmental assessments.It can be applied to projects, programmes, sector-wide interventions and policy reforms. However, it is not useful for assessing budget support or identifying the poverty impacts of very small projects.
• It can serve as a framework for monitoring impact hypotheses during implementation and as an input for later evaluation exercises.
• It provides a flexible level of analysis dependent on the resources available. Should more detailed analysis be required, it can be scaled up to a poverty and social impact analysis (PSIA).

Filed under: Development, Methods, OECD, Poverty, Aid, Development Policy, M&E, Research

ADB Approves Measures to Enhance Operations Evaluation Function

The Asian Development Bank’s Board of Directors today approved a series of measures to further enhance the independence and overall effectiveness of ADB’s operations evaluation function.

”These initiatives will further enhance the independence and effectiveness of ADB’s evaluation function and will place it at the forefront of international evaluation practice,” said Executive Director, Mr Phil Bowen, chair of the Working Group which also comprised fellow Executive Directors, Mr Howard Brown and Mr. Wencai Zhang, and ADB Managing Director General, Mr Rajat M. Nag.

The measures include extending the term of the Director General of the Operations Evaluation Department (OED) to five years from three years on a non-renewable basis; and the position to be appointed by ADB’s Board, upon the recommendation of the Development Effectiveness Committee of the Board, in consultation with the ADB President.

The Director General’s performance will be subject to annual review by the Chair of the Development Effectiveness Committee, and the budget of the OED will be approved by ADB’s Board separately from the Bank’s administrative budget. OED would be renamed the Independent Evaluation Department to reflect its enhanced independent status.

Although ADB has a clearly articulated model of independent evaluation that emphasizes organizational and behavioral independence, protection from influence, and the avoidance of conflicts of interest, OED’s credibility as an independent evaluation unit could be further enhanced by the measures, the report said. http://www.adb.org/article.asp?id=12756

Filed under: Banking, Development, Asia, Evaluation, M&E