IDEAS first Constitution was proposed by a Steering Committee of nine members (six from developing countries and three from developed countries). It was approved and adopted on 8 September 2002, in Beijing (China), when a Constituent Assembly launched IDEAS, elected a widely representative Board composed of ten members, and approved a three-year workplan and budget.
Over time amendments became necessary, to follow the historical functioning of the Association, while preserving its principles. In September 2016, members approved a new Constitution that better reflects the nature of a professional association with a charitable purpose and addresses the needs of the growing Association.
IDEAS 2016 ConstitutionBy-laws on the Nomination and Election of Board Members, as per Article 44 of the IDEAS Articles of Association, were developed, facing requirements of the growth of the membership and the renewed interest in being part of the IDEAS Board. The document here published was approved by IDEAS members on 2 December 2018.
IDEAS 2018 Election By-LawsThe Code of Ethics is of primary importance for members – it describes what they aspire to in evaluations. The Code was formulated by a multicultural group of members from diverse backgrounds, and was accepted at the Global Assembly in Barbados in 2013. It is the product of an intercultural dialogue about a subject with disputable universal substance. The current version of the Code of Ethics was adopted by the Board in 2014. You may also want to consult the presentations made at the 2016 EES Conference in Maastricht, by Rob d. van den Berg, Cristina Magro and Hur Hassnain on the IDEAS Code of Ethics.
IDEAS Code of EthicsThe Competencies for Development Evaluation Evaluators, Managers, and Commissioners is the product of the volunteer efforts of many IDEAS members, under the guidance of Linda Morra Imas, chair of the IDEAS Initiative on International Competencies for Development Evaluators, and IDEAS Board member. The document contains Competencies for International Development Evaluators, Managers of Evaluations, and Commissioners of Evaluations. Detailed criteria underlying the competencies are provided. The document reflects revisions made in response to comments on (1) a September 19th draft, posted on the website as of October 31st, 2010, (2) a revised draft circulated at the IDEAS General Meeting at the Global Assembly in Amman, Jordan in April 2011, and (3) an additional final comment period. Additional edits were made for clarification and publication. The main core of the October document, however, remains substantially the same. You may also be interested in Cristina Magro’s study of 2013, which explores Awareness, Relevance and Use of the Competencies Framework by evaluators.
IDEAS 2012 Competencies FrameworkPOLICIES
As a UK based charity, IDEAS is subject to the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which comes into effect on 25 May 2018. The GDPR demands greater accountability and transparency from organisations about how they collect, process and store personal information.
This document has been prepared by the IDEAS Board in recognition of IDEAS’ legal requirement to comply with the GDPR.
IDEAS proposed and adopted a Publication and Dissemination Strategy (PDS) in 2016 to provide its members with a wider range of opportunities for disseminating, exchanging and developing ideas, theories and concepts about evaluation. The IDEAS Publication and Dissemination Policy was published in July 2017.
The strategy allows paying members to publish original work on international development evaluation-related topics to meet the following short-term objectives:
- Give visibility to practitioners and decision-makers with no prior track of publications;
- Disseminate evaluation-related ideas on topics and/or countries rarely mentioned in mainstream peer-reviewed evaluation literature;
- Encourage IDEAS members to document and write about their own evaluation practice on a more regular basis (not only in response to the call for conference proposals launched every two years before the IDEAS General Assembly);
Use the publication of articles and other items posted on the IDEAS website as the entry point for further dialogue and mutual intellectual and professional enrichment among the Association’s members.
Likewise, it is expected that the implementation of the publication policy will contribute, in the long run, to advance and further IDEAS members’ practice of development evaluation, thanks to the strengthening of their capacity and their uptake of innovative evaluation methodologies.
On 2019 IDEAS obtained the rights of a Publisher. In order to standardize the publications, a Reference Style Guide was built and applied in the first book of the series Evaluation for Transformational Change.
IDEAS Publication PolicyIn 2010, IDEAS was faced with the strong interest, by a group of members, in health development evaluation and HIV/Aids. To that end, IDEAS Thematic Interest Groups (ITIGs) were created, as subgroups of the organisation, for IDEAS members, as a benefit of membership and as a means to implement its mission. With the ITIGs, IDEAS supports specific interests of its paying members, and fosters the exchange of ideas and innovation in development evaluation.
Under the leadership of Linda Morra Imas, guidelines for the overall functioning of the ITIGs were then proposed and approved by the Board. These guidelines constituted the basis for the current policy, here published. In 2016 a new IDEAS Thematic Interest Groups Policy was designed under the leadership of Cristina Magro, to answer the needs of the growing interest on the ITIGs.
If you are an IDEAS member and want to join one of these ITIGs, you are invited to visit the ITIGs pages.
ITIGs Policy