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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.

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.

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.

Contexte

• 2007 : Mise en place du Bureau d’Évaluation des Politiques Publiques et Institutionnalisation du Système national d’évaluation
• Situation au MAEP : les décisions ne se prenaient pas en général sur la base de données probantes. Par exemple, le Plan Stratégique de Relance du Secteur Agriculture (PSRSA) a été produit en un mois.
• Les organisations de producteurs n’intervenaient pas à des niveaux clés de la chaine de décision
• 2009 : Evaluation de la politique de développement du secteur agricole (PSRSA)
• Les recommandations de l’évaluation de 2009 ont répondu à un besoin latent sur le terrain (Certaines ont été mises en œuvre, d’autres pas.)

The issue of utilization of M&E information is central to the performance and sustainability of an M&E system. Utilization depends on the nature and strength of the demand for M&E information—in other words, on the incentives to use M&E. Countries with little or no demand for M&E may be perceived as facing an insuperable barrier to efforts to build M&E systems, but this perspective is far too pessimistic.

There are ways to increase demand by strengthening incentives to ensure utilization of M&E information. Simply having M&E information available does not guarantee that it will actually be used, whether by program managers in their day-to-day work, by budget officials responsible for advising on spending options, or by a Parliament responsible for accountability oversight. Are there incentives to use M&E information? This webinar discussed incentives to use M&E information for building a robust M&E System.