Background and Objectives of CIDE

The Center for International Development Evaluation (CIDE) is a research center specialized in international development sector evaluation launched at Seoul National University in March 2014. Our mission is to make contributions in improving the development programs of recipient countries and donor agencies by assessing aid effectiveness with rigorous evaluation methods in accord with international standard.

The importance of evaluation has been emphasized as Korea’s ODA expenditure has increased approximately 5.3 times in year 2013 compared to year 2002. Korea, as a member of OECD DAC (Development Assistance Committee) since 2010, is exerting vast effort in improving its overall aid system and aid effectiveness to fulfill its role as a responsible donor country.

In May 2009, Korea was advised from the special peer review of OECD DAC to equip integrated evaluation system for both grants and loans. As a response, Korea has established ‘Integrated Evaluation Subcommittee’ in 2010 to promote ‘Integrated Evaluation Plan.’ Additionally in 2013, the ‘Framework Act on International Development’ was amended to mandate nearly every execution of ODA to be subjected to self-assessment and the evaluation outcomes be reported.

Despite such effort along with the increased size and diversity of ODA, Korea still lacks an organized and integrated evaluation system. In this respect, CIDE aims to make contributions by evaluating various development programs operated by national/international agencies using objective and scientific methods.

By doing so, the underlying belief of the establishment of CIDE can be achieved, which is to strengthen the evaluation capacity of international development agencies while facilitating interaction within the international development evaluators.

The vision of CIDE is to be ‘a practical research center dedicated to promoting effective aid to developing countries through credible evidence generation and recipient-oriented evaluation.’

Credible Evidence

The primary research goal of CIDE is to provide substantial assistance to improve aid strategy by generating and accumulating evaluation data that can be utilized by practitioners.

Recipient-oriented Evaluation

CIDE intends to support recipient countries to bring about positive changes through evaluation tailored to recipients’ needs. We aim for recipient participatory evaluation with real-time feedback that can be immediately reflected in for program improvement. At the same time, CIDE aspires to play a pivotal role in endorsing the recipient-oriented evaluation in Korea’s international development community.

Improving the Efficiency of Development Programs

Program evaluation is crucial in order to make the best use of the limited foreign aid budget. In this regard, CIDE strives to improve the evaluation capacity of national/international organizations as well as recipient countries through various education and training programs. At the same time, CIDE aims to provide practical assistance to national/international organizations by scientifically measuring the impact of the development programs executed by various national/international organizations, and provide evaluation feedback that can be reflected in for the future programs. Moreover, the role of CIDE is to enhance the capacity of evaluation institutes while facilitating interaction within the community of evaluation experts. With such multi-dimensional activities encompassing from practice to knowledge and from field to academia, CIDE will strive to produce credible evidence and recipient-oriented evaluation results in order to serve as a practical research institute.