Позитивные изменения, Том 3 №1, 2023. Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 1 (2023)

It’s always worth remembering that when we talk about a profession, we have to understand that it has to have a number of attributes. Some of these are present in Russia, some are not, says Irina Efremova-Garth, First Deputy Director of the Donors Forum.

One of the key signs of professionalization of an activity is the self-organization of the related community. For example, in Russia we have the Association of Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation (ASPPE or ASOPP), established in 2014 with the mission to develop and promote evaluation as a profession. The Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center and the Garant Center of Social Technologies hold summer schools on evaluation; the PROOCENKU Club has been working actively, with the colleagues actively sharing their experiences and lessons learned during its meetings. An equally important attribute of professionalization is the existence of principles and standards formulated by the specialist community. In Russia, as in other countries where professional associations operate, these principles have been developed and adopted by the ASPPE[17]. Their distinctive feature is that each of the six principles contains recommendations not only for evaluators, but also for the clients and the participants of the evaluation process. Another sign of professionalization is the certification system, wherein a specialist in the field of evaluation would receive official confirmation of his/her experience and knowledge. There is no certification of evaluators in our country; at the same time, it does not exist in many countries of the world either, with the exception of Canada and Japan.

The list of signs can also include growing interest of universities in the professional training of evaluation specialists: for example, Moscow State Psychological and Pedagogical University has launched a Master’s degree program “Evidence-Based Design and Evaluation of Programs in the Field of Social Risk Management in Childhood”. One of the factors contributing to the development of evaluation in Russia was the strategic audit organized and conducted by the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation. It is carried out to assess the feasibility, risks and results of achieving strategic goals, as well as the impact of external and internal factors on the progress towards these strategic goals.

“All these facts serve as an evidence that evaluation is developing as a profession,” Irina Efremova-Garth summarizes.

Elena Malitskaya, president of the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center (SCISC) notes that there is a growing demand from the state for specialists in evaluation in the country. “However, this demand is quite narrow – for a specific type of evaluation only, related to a review of applications, projects and programs,” Elena Malitskaya says.

Marina Mikhailova, director of the Garant Center, agrees that the demand for specialists in evaluation and the respective training is growing.

“So far, evaluation remains an expertise, not a profession. But 15–20 years ago, it was merely a discussion between specialists; today the situation has changed greatly. On the one hand, there is a lot more talking about evaluation. On the other hand, every applicant in the presidential and other grant competitions needs to evaluate the results of their projects. In addition, there are more educational products that teach self-evaluation,” Marina Mikhailova says.

There are contests rewarding people and organizations that pay attention to evaluation, she continues. The expert community started looking at the annual reports to see whether they contain information about the evaluation of the organization’s performance. They also started realizing that evaluation is not the tool of a few super-specialist, but something everyone has to do, one way or another. Sometimes employees of organizations are just unaware of this.

Evaluation has come a long way towards professionalization, but it still has a long way to go, says Natalia Kosheleva, president of the Association of Specialists in Program and Policy Evaluation, a consultant on monitoring and evaluation of socially oriented programs and projects.

“Any profession is constantly evolving in some direction. Professions are becoming more and more niche, evaluation is no exception. It’s a small profession, but it’s growing pretty fast,” she says.

WHERE DO EVALUATION SPECIALISTS COME FROM?

There are not as many people around the world with a degree in evaluation as there are lawyers or economists. Our colleagues in the West have Master’s and PhD degree programs in evaluation, but given its interdisciplinary nature, the number of people in this profession is not determined by the number of those who received a University degree, experts say.