Carlos, thank you for sharing this example. The FAO One Health evaluation is a genuinely instructive case, and your framing of the "temporal mismatch" between retrospective findings and forward-looking relevance captures something I think many evaluators intuitively recognise but struggle to articulate clearly in evaluation reports.
What I find particularly insightful in your reflection is the reinterpretation of existing DAC criteria through a foresight lens. Framing relevance as "future fitness," sustainability as "resilience under change," and coherence as "the ability to work across systems" is not a radical departure from the criteria. I would argue they are a more honest application of them in contexts where conditions are already shifting during programme implementation. I have been thinking along similar lines, and your example reinforces the case that foresight doesn't necessarily require a separate methodology inserted into evaluation…it can be woven into the interpretive framing we already use (see my response below to Conny).
Your point about path dependencies is also poignant. Institutional strengths become constraints when the future demands different configurations of expertise and partnership. This seems like fertile ground for scenario planning in particular, whereby it can help organisations like FAO stress-test their current operating models against emerging One Health futures.
You comment also made me think of Michael Quinn Patton’s 2020 article “Evaluation Criteria for Evaluating Transformation: Implications for the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Global Climate Emergency” (see attached). MQP critiques the DAC criteria and offers six new criteria oriented around transformation. From his article abstract: Fundamental systems transformations are needed to address the global emergency brought on by climate change and related global trends, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which, together, pose existential threats to the future of humanity. Transformation has become the clarion call on the global stage. Evaluating transformation requires criteria. The revised Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/ Development Assistance Committee criteria are adequate for business as usual summative and accountability evaluations but are inadequate for addressing major systems transformations. Six criteria for evaluating transformations are offered, discussed, and illustrated by applying them to the pandemic and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. The suggested criteria illustrate possibilities. The criteria for judging any intervention should be developed in the context of and aligned with the purpose of a specific evaluation and information needs of primary intended users. This article concludes that the greatest danger for evaluators in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday’s criteria.
I have used MQP’s transformational criteria in two evaluations. I’ll share later on how this worked and did not work in the context I was working in…a foresight lens definitely played a role…or I should say a lack thereof.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 26/03/2026
Carlos, thank you for sharing this example. The FAO One Health evaluation is a genuinely instructive case, and your framing of the "temporal mismatch" between retrospective findings and forward-looking relevance captures something I think many evaluators intuitively recognise but struggle to articulate clearly in evaluation reports.
What I find particularly insightful in your reflection is the reinterpretation of existing DAC criteria through a foresight lens. Framing relevance as "future fitness," sustainability as "resilience under change," and coherence as "the ability to work across systems" is not a radical departure from the criteria. I would argue they are a more honest application of them in contexts where conditions are already shifting during programme implementation. I have been thinking along similar lines, and your example reinforces the case that foresight doesn't necessarily require a separate methodology inserted into evaluation…it can be woven into the interpretive framing we already use (see my response below to Conny).
Your point about path dependencies is also poignant. Institutional strengths become constraints when the future demands different configurations of expertise and partnership. This seems like fertile ground for scenario planning in particular, whereby it can help organisations like FAO stress-test their current operating models against emerging One Health futures.
You comment also made me think of Michael Quinn Patton’s 2020 article “Evaluation Criteria for Evaluating Transformation: Implications for the Coronavirus Pandemic and the Global Climate Emergency” (see attached). MQP critiques the DAC criteria and offers six new criteria oriented around transformation. From his article abstract:
Fundamental systems transformations are needed to address the global emergency brought on by climate change and related global trends, including the COVID-19 pandemic, which, together, pose existential threats to the future of humanity. Transformation has become the clarion call on the global stage. Evaluating transformation requires criteria. The revised Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/ Development Assistance Committee criteria are adequate for business as usual summative and accountability evaluations but are inadequate for addressing major systems transformations. Six criteria for evaluating transformations are offered, discussed, and illustrated by applying them to the pandemic and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. The suggested criteria illustrate possibilities. The criteria for judging any intervention should be developed in the context of and aligned with the purpose of a specific evaluation and information needs of primary intended users. This article concludes that the greatest danger for evaluators in times of turbulence is not the turbulence—it is to act with yesterday’s criteria.
I have used MQP’s transformational criteria in two evaluations. I’ll share later on how this worked and did not work in the context I was working in…a foresight lens definitely played a role…or I should say a lack thereof.