Short Abstract

Dioptra Consortium organisations have conducted over 70 economic evaluations of cash-based interventions implemented worldwide and shared the cost data publicly, making a crucial contribution to the Value for Money evidence base. We will share the practical lessons learned on economic evaluations.

Description

In the backdrop of increasing need and decreasing Official Development Assistance (ODA), improving the Value for Money of our work in humanitarian and development contexts is an ethical imperative. Accordingly, both implementers and donors pay an ever greater attention to how resources are spent and what they can achieve, due to funding constraints. While assessing Value for Money is critical to understanding how best to optimise scarce resources for maximum impact and reach, it often remains underutilised in humanitarian and development contexts.

To fill this gap and in pursuit of achieving more impact and reach for the money spent, seven non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have formed the Dioptra Consortium (www.dioptratool.org) to conduct economic evaluations in humanitarian and development contexts with a unified methodology, aligned with the 4E framework (economy, efficiency, effectiveness, equity) for assessing Value for Money. By systematically assessing the costs of delivering specific outputs—outputs that are well evidenced to lead to outcomes and impact—economic evaluations can help organisations optimise ongoing and future programming.

The use of a standard methodology enabled our consortium to create large, robust data sets on the costs of delivering program interventions, which are externally available as a global public good. Cost evidence can help inform programme design, decision-making, programme adaptation, and performance management, increasing the likelihood that scarce resources are used well internally and externally. The consortium further aims to act as a catalyst for others to join the collective effort of creating high quality and actionable cost evidence.

This session will use a micro-lens by showcasing a specific example of Value for Money analysis conducted in the Sahel region across multiple organisations, before zooming out and presenting the findings—and challenges—of conducting economic evaluations and consolidating cost data for cash-based interventions implemented worldwide. The panel will reflect on possible efficiency gains, effectiveness and equity considerations, data challenges, opportunities for further harmonisation, as well as limitations.

The panel will discuss key questions such as:

What are the parameters and what are the conditions to consider when assessing Value for Money?

How can Value for Money analysis inform programmatic learning and funding decisions in different contexts?