Purpose
I want to show the evaluation community how research and theory drawn from Complexity (and “complexity-adjacent”) Science can be used to make decisions about models, methodologies, and data interpretation.
Contributors
This series will present many short commentaries on a single case. I have authors lined up, but admission is open-ended. If anyone wants to contribute, please get in touch with me.
The Case
The case is the Global Environment Facility’s Food Security Program (FSP). (Thanks to Juha Uitto for help in setting up this example.) FSP is one of GEF’s three “Integrated Approach Pilots”. FSP consists of:
- a bundle of country-specific projects, and
- a regional hub to coordinate across projects and to promote cross-project learning (Figure 1).
Scope and Content of Case Presentations
Each contributor will pick an aspect of the FSP that tickles his or her fancy. This can be a single project, a group of projects (e.g. country), projects with similar outcomes, regional hub, or specific regional hub activities. The format for each contribution will be:
- A paragraph that identifies the relevant domain of complexity, along with a few references.
- Questions related to models, methodology, or data interpretation that flow from the chosen aspect of complexity.
- A paragraph on why the contributor thinks that answers to the questions will yield knowledge that would not come from a traditional evaluation.
Evaluation Uncertainty 
It’s uncerta