“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.