Contract, Evaluation

The contract for an evaluation is an agreement between the evaluator and the client in which both have certain roles and responsibilities. The client agrees to participate in the evaluation, approve the evaluation plan, review and approve the evaluation report, and provide the agreedon funding. The evaluator, in turn, agrees to complete certain work within a specified time period and budget; follow human subject protection guidelines; collect, store, and retrieve data; and edit and disseminate reports.

According to the Program Evaluation Standards, the following are components of this agreement: evaluation purpose, evaluation questions, listing of stakeholders, deliverables, data collection procedures, data analysis procedures, management plan, reporting plan, quality control procedures, timelines, budget, provisions for periodic review, contract amendment, and contract termination. In some evaluations, there may also be the need for specifying subcontracts and subcontractors. The subcontract, then, would be an agreement between the evaluator and another person or organization that consents to undertake certain work on behalf of the evaluator and to further the evaluation effort. Such a subcontracting situation may arise with a large-scale or complex evaluation that requires certain expertise beyond the scope of the evaluator.

In most but not all cases, and particularly with an external evaluation or a subcontract, the contract is a written agreement. With a written contract or subcontract, the client and the evaluator or the evaluator and the subcontractor sign the contract. This written contract serves as a legal document binding both parties. Note that either party can break a contract or subcon-tract. If a contract is broken, there may, however, be legal or financial ramifications.

Even with an internal evaluation, the evaluator should provide a memorandum of agreement indicating the work, the personnel, the procedures, the deliverables, and the timelines. A well-designed evaluation plan that contains statements about the background and rationale, the evaluation purpose, the stakeholders and audiences, and the key questions can provide the critical information needed to negotiate the basic evaluation work for either the contract or the memorandum of agreement.