Evaluation Based on Critical Systems Heuristics

Evaluation Based on Critical Systems Heuristics

1. Continual ethical commitment to the overarching purpose of improved human well-being

2. The Technique: doing a CSH evaluation

   • 1. Identify the system of interest
   • 2. Reflect and make a note on your own role as evaluator in the SoI
   • 3. Fits the three level hierarchy of planning
   • 4. Identify associated stakeholders representing beneficiaries, decision makers, experts, and witnesses.
   • 5. Build up a picture of the SoI through addressing CSH questions in a systematic manner
   • 6. Design an interview questionnaire for each of the key stakeholder groups identified
   • 7. The ‘final’ evaluation will then need to be written up in a clear narrative form

3. Toolbox

   • 12 CSH questions
     • Motivation
       • - Beneficiary - Purpose - Measure of success
     • Control
       • - Decision maker - Resources - Decision enviroment
     • Expertise
       • - Expert - Expertise - Guarantor
     • Legitimacy
       • - Witnesses - Emancipation - Worldview
   • Use
     • The CSH questions can be applied to any purposeful system of interest, might be associated with human purpose

4. Case Study

   • Identifiying SoI
     • Botswana economic planning has been based principally on the trickle-down strategy of using revenue from diamonds to finance public sector expansion and improvements in rural infrastructure
   • Role of evaluator
     • Was associated with both categories 7 (‘expert’) and 10 (‘witness’)
   • Level of planning
     • Project was oriented towards administration (‘goal planning’); NRMP was oriented towards project management (‘objective planning’); and BRIMP was oriented more specifically towards policy design (‘ideal planning’).
   • Stakeholder groups
     • - Goverment - Donor agency - Consultancy - NGO
   • Monological appraisal
   • Dialogical appraisal
     • The stakeholder mapping and normative mapping
   • Reporting