The Nation
Published Date: Jan 1, 2016
Call to implement evidence-based policy making at national level
LAHORE – The speakers of a seminar have stressed the need for evidence-based policy making at national level which is presently not being implemented in the country.
They were speaking at a conference on the Role of Monitoring & Evaluation in Evidence Based Policy making organized by UNICEF and the Directorate General Monitoring & Evaluation (DGM&E) Department of Planning and Development, Punjab, at Lahore.
The seminar was held to mark the end of the International Year of Evaluation, with a vision to promote equity-focused, gender responsive evaluations, and evidence-based decision making in the public sector of Pakistan.
Ex-Chairman Planning and Development Board, Punjab Salman Ghani said that with a view to grab the attention of policymakers, research and empirical evidence needs to be provided, and suggested that more insightful measures be used to monitor the progress of programs as opposed to the mere use of linear percentages to show progress.
Director General M&E P&D Dr Sajjad Mubbin highlighted broad themes of the conference including Big Data, innovative approaches for evaluation, monitoring frameworks for public sector projects and the role of civil society in strengthening the evidence-based policy making process.
Special focus was placed on investigating whether we were equipped to provide data for the implementation and monitoring of SDG indicators.
The conference was a result of collaboration of DG M&E and UNICEF Pakistan under the National Evaluation Capacity Development (NECD) initiative.
This was the last of the 88 events conducted worldwide in 2015 to launch the Global Evaluation Agenda 2016-2020 and to mainstream evaluations for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to which Pakistan became a signatory in September 2015.
Mussarrat Youssuf, Research and Evaluation Specialist, UNICEF Pakistan talked about the need and significance of evaluation in order to support the efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
She said that the joint efforts of the Government of Punjab and UNICEF, Pakistan, towards evidence-based policymaking would continue in 2016.
Eminent academician, Dr. Abid Aman Burki, Professor of Economics at LUMS talked about the nature of impact evaluation studies and the role of civil society in strengthening evidence-based policymaking.
Representatives from the Planning & Development Department, M&E experts from the public sector, civil society, academia and UN agencies participated in the conference.
Researchers from Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Islamabad and LEAD Pakistan also presented their take on evidence-based policymaking and the role of think thanks.
Source: http://nation.com.pk/business/01-Jan-2016/call-to-implement-evidence-based-policy-making-at-national-level