Evidence Use by Parliaments during COVID (Webinar Slides)
March 2021
In light of the COVID19 pandemic, a very important question of what the role of parliaments has become during the national lockdowns and response to the COVID19 pandemic remains. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. This webinar discussed the evolving role of parliaments during the pandemic and ways they have adapted to meet their roles. Of particular focus will be how parliaments were able to (or not) gain access to and use evidence to fulfill their duties in this complex and fast-changing environment.
Government Commissioned Evaluation
November 2020
The brief shares lessons from a case study into the use of the evaluation of the South African government’s response to violence against women and children (VAWC) which was commissioned by the Departments of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) and Social Development (DSD). The ethnographic account
of the journey of a government-commissioned evaluation from evidence generation to its integration within policy decisions offers lessons both to those involved in evidence generation and those in policy-making institutions.
The research found that because government-commissioned evaluations start with a policy question and respond to demands from policy makers, this shapes the questions to be asked but also promotes subsequent use of the evidence. Having an institutionalised system (National Evaluation System) that encourages the use of evidence created adequate incentives for policy makers to act on the evidence. DPME and DSD evaluation units played an important knowledge brokering role that shaped evidence generation, ensuring that policy makers effectively participate in the evaluation process. They also translated the evaluation evidence to key policy messages, briefing policy makers, and communicating the evaluation once approved. Civil society organisations (CSOs) were also critical to enabling the use of the evaluation by providing spaces for ongoing multi-sector dialogue that proved critical to the sense-making process needed for individuals to act on the evidence. CSOs also pressured government to respond to the problem of VAWC, which created an opportunity for government to use the evidence from the diagnostic review.
The case study reaffirms that use of evidence in a highly contested, and often long, policy process is both important and complex. It is influenced by how the evidence is demanded and generated and what happens after the generation.
Experiences and Lessons of Policymakers
September 2020
This policy brief describes experiences and lessons of policymakers who sought for evidence from the rapid response service situated at Makerere University College of Health Sciences to inform decision processes they were directly involved into. The rapid response service is a knowledge brokerage service that has been in existence for over 10 years providing synthesized evidence in response to urgent demand for evidence, usually within 28 days, from policy and
decision-makers at different levels of decision-making. The rapid response service seeks to remove the barrier of time to access, availability and use of evidence for policy- and decision-makers to promote the increased use of evidence informed decision-making in government.
Getting Evidence Quicker
February 2021
Rapid evaluations are intended to reduce the costs of evaluation projects and the time they take (DPME, 2020). This is an evaluation which can produce a result that can feed into policy and practice quickly, but yet is sufficiently robust to provide good guidance for decisionmaking.
It addresses the need to quickly assess policy/programme/strategy/function delivery, and establish the main performance data, with main recommendations for improvements (Hercules, 2019). They help us to understand and learn from what works, what doesn’t, when and for whom.
This brief looks at Rapid Evaluations in the public sector of selected African Countries.
Evidence Based Policy Making and Implementation Workshop Report
13-15 October 2020
The workshop was designed to enhance the use of evidence to improve development and impact of government policies and programmes. The training sought to expose the participants to some practical strategies and tools for enhancing the policy making value chain as a follow-up to the public sector M&E baseline studies carried out in 2019. The EBPMI workshop sought to enable the participants to;
1. Understand the difference between evidence and opinion and distinguish evidence based decisions and opinion-based decisions.
2. Understand the policy/programme cycle and how evidence can be used and internalized.
3. Understand what the diagnostic phase involves and become familiar with some approaches for understanding a policy problem.
4. Become aware of the different types of research and their usefulness at different points in the EBPM&I cycle.
5. Gain some practical engagement with a diagnosing tool.
6. Obtain a high level overview of various sources of evidence and datasets valuable to practitioners.
7. Deepen their understanding of the factors that influence policy-making and implementation using practical examples, focusing on the relevant lessons for public sector officials.
8. Reflect on how they can apply the use of evidence and learning in their organizations in different time scales and contexts.
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