“I think it is a profession in its nascent stages. There are many signs indicating this. If you look at the percentage of those who graduated from higher education institutions and majored in «Evaluation», that number is really small anywhere in the world. Russia does not have such specialization at all. People come to evaluation from different fields and have different backgrounds,” says Alexey Kuzmin, Owner, Process Consulting Company.
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.