Origins of the Logic Framework Model for Evaluation

Origins of the Logic Framework Model for Evaluation

The Logic Framework Model (LFM), Logic Framework Approach (LFA) was developed as a tool to manage foreign development aid and measure the costs and benefits of international development.

In 1969 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned the design of an evaluation model to Leon J. Rosenberg. Mr. Rosenberg’s creation was the Logic Framework Model, which is the program design methodology, and the Log Frames, which are the evaluation documents.

People of my generation in Latin America and in the rest of “the underdeveloped world” (a term from the 1970s which may be replaced by the more politically and geographically correct term “the global South”) grew in communities where the schools we attended, the hot breakfast and the vaccinations we received where part of USAID programs. Consequently, I grew in a culture of evaluation based on the LFM. For example, development aid was conditioned to the satisfactory meeting of predetermined measurable short, mid and long-term outcomes: number of children under 5 who got their vaccinations, increased number of children who learned how to read and write, and number of adults who completed their training as dengue monitors.

The USAID’s Log Frames model was soon embraced by, and re-interpreted by, other bilateral and multilateral international development funding agencies from the UNDP to others such as Germany’s GTZ, Norway’s NORAD, and Canada’s CIDA. By the late 1980s, and despite logistic and ethical concerns by some, almost all international and national Non-Government Organizations working in regions such as Latin America and Asia were required to use LFM in their proposals and in their progress reports.

In Canada, the culture of evaluation and Log Frames was first embraced for domestic purposes by the Federal Government in the late 1980s. Log Frames gave the Federal Government a method for increasing departmental performance and for ensuring transparency in the administration of public funds. The potential benefits of program evaluation soon made its way into federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and private funding agencies which have adopted Log Frames and other evaluation models as mechanisms to manage grants to Non-Profit or Non-Government Organizations. Over the past 30 years, non-profits, first in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle and more recently in the rest of Canada, have had to quickly adapt their grant proposals and report writing to the evaluation requirements of private and public donors and funders. Among the common concerns about evaluation is that, unlike programs and services ran by the government, non-profits don’t necessarily have the resources to adequately train and support their staff to comply with the evaluation approach government and private funding agencies use are “results oriented”. In most cases, non-profits have been developing their own internal evaluation models which are usually “process oriented” and best fit the uniqueness of their programs and services and the characteristics of the communities they serve.

More on the origins of the LFM is available at the following links:

Logical Framework in Wikipedia

University of Wisconsin free e-course on the use of Logical Framework Model

Rick Davies's "Working with Logic Framework Under Duress of by Desire"

Log frame humoristique image