Guidelines for analysing pathways to impact: Evaluation of open data for development

This document presents a framework, developed by the GODAN Action project, that supports the evaluation of open data projects that are undertaken in developing countries. The evaluation framework particularly aims at supporting two types of users: professional evaluators who wish to know more about evaluation in the nexus of open data and development practitioners who wish to learn more about how to maximize the potential of open data initiatives and improving their approach to maximize impact. As an introduction to the framework, this document explains the dynamics of evaluation and how the context of an evaluation could influence its objectives and setup, as well as the main principles and concepts that have guided the framework development and that are essential to make it contextual, adaptive, and learning focused are introduced. The evaluation framework focuses on examining three core evaluation questions: How does the initiative achieve change? How well is the initiative being implemented? How well does the initiative contribute to foreseen impacts? The guidelines describe possible ways to approach these questions, and steps that can be taken to answer them in the frame of an evaluation. Where helpful, examples and illustrations are provided from the cases studies that were analysed by GODAN Action in the domains of open weather data, open land data and open nutrition data.