The Secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada Responds to the CES

26 Mar
2015
CES President, Treasury Board of Canada, Professional Designation ProgramWith 2 Comments

Click to enlargeMs Yaprak Baltacioğlu, Secretary of the Treasury Board of Canada, has responded to the CES letter inviting the Government of Canada to "work with CES to support federal evaluators in obtaining the Credentialed Evaluator designation". Ms Baltacioğlu "emphasized the importance of having an effective evaluation function to support government decisions". She indicated that the Treasury Board Secretariat is "interested in exploring further measures that would increase the expertise of federal evaluators", " to learn more about the Canadian Evaluation Society's (CES-'s) professional designation program and to discuss the possibilities for the CES to collaborate in advancing the expertise of the federal evaluation community". As suggested by Ms Baltacioğlu, we will initiate the discussion with Mr. Brian Pagan, Assistant Secretary of the Expenditure Management Sector, in the weeks to come.

If you have views on this or if you want to propose a course of action, feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Benoît Gauthier, CES president

Comments

Submitted by [email protected] on Mon, 03/30/2015 - 13:15
Procurement across the Canadian federal government often treats the CE designation as certification; asking for CE designation as either a mandatory or ranked requirement in RFPs. The CE designation is not certification and CES has made no visible effort to educate the Government of Canada in this regard. While organizationally CES may view this as a positive outcome ... the unintended consequence is that well credentialed evaluators (often CES members) are unfairly excluded from earning a fair living.

Submitted by [email protected] on Mon, 03/30/2015 - 16:27
The existence of the designation does not mean that the one without the designation cannot perform competent evaluation work. As stated at http://evaluationcanada.ca/ce, "The CE designation is a service provided by CES to its members, who may elect to become credentialed on a voluntary basis. It recognizes competence and promotes continuous learning within our evaluation community." [new paragraph]

It is CES' position that the CE is a valuable and worthwhile designation, that it is clearly positioned in CES' communications as a demonstration of education and experience required by the CES to be a competent evaluator, and that we are working towards its recognition by all employers and buyers of evaluation services. [new paragraph]

I understand your position on the CE designation. Well established professionals may not benefit the most from it. But CES must take the long view of contributing to the establishment of a profession of evaluator for generations to come. One of the tools (and there are others) toward that goal is this designation that aims to provide some assurance to users of evaluations that the person conducting the work has training and experience to do it competently. It clearly does not mean that the one without the designation cannot perform competent evaluation work -- CES has made its position on that abundantly clear. [new paragraph]

That said, CES will gladly review your application for the CE designation if you elect to submit one.