World Bank conference on ‘Impact Evaluation Evidence to Policy’ ends today
DHAKA, April 30, 2014 – Impact evaluation research and the evidence generated can help governments design and deliver programs that successfully improve lives and reduce poverty, said participants at a senior level conference in Dhaka today.
The senior-level Evidence-to-Policy workshop was organized by the World Bank, in partnership with the Government of Bangladesh, Innovations for Poverty Action, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), and the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA). Participants, including senior government officials, civil society organizations and researchers, reviewed and discuss successful programs for providing clean water and sanitation, promoting rural livelihood opportunities, and giving children the nutrition and skills they need to succeed in school and later in life.
“Evidence of what works and what does not is vitally important for policy makers for designing effective development policies and programs. Impact evaluation helps them to understand and undertake more effective approaches to reduce poverty and ensure shared growth,” said Johannes Zutt, World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh.
The senior level session today provided an opportunity for government and civil society officials from Bangladesh to share experiences in promoting better service delivery to the poor using rigorous impact evaluation evidence and to discuss new approaches.
“We are very pleased to work directly with Bangladesh policymakers on what we have learned from impact evaluations and how the evidence can be used for better programs and policies,” said Joost de Laat, Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund (SIEF) program manager, World Bank.
Earlier this week, the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund held a three-day workshop in Dhaka for government officials from Bangladesh and the South Asia region, focused on learning how to incorporate impact evaluation into programs to measure whether programs are having a real impact on people’s lives. Impact evaluation research provides the evidence that policymakers need to design more effective programs for improving education and health, for example. The workshop included hands-on training in impact evaluation methods and participants worked with leading experts from the World Bank and partner groups to design an impact evaluation for their current projects.
SIEF, which organized the workshops in Dhaka, supports regional workshops like these around the globe to train policymakers, researchers and development staff in the nuts and bolts of impact evaluations, and promotes the evidence that helps policymakers design better programs that deliver services to the poor.
