2nd Workshop on Evaluation for Policymaking held in Nanning
This year’s second Workshop on Evaluation for Policymaking which is cosponsored by the Ministry of Finance of China and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and co-organized by the Asia-Pacific Finance and Development Institute (AFDI), the Asia-Pacific Community of Practice on Managing for Development Results (APCoP), and Guangxi Provincial Finance Department is held from November 24-28 in Nanning, China.
Dr. Li Kouqing, Director-General of AFDC, and Mr. Ayumi Konishi, Director General of East Asia Department of ADB, and Mr. Yang Zhu, Deputy Director General of Guangxi Provincial Finance Department attended the opening ceremony and delivered opening remarks respectively on behalf of the co-organizers of the workshop.
As Mr. Konishi pointed out, the theme of the workshop is really important because evaluation offers considerable promise in informing policies and actions. There are growing evidences that more and more policymakers in developing world are increasingly using evaluation evidences to assess the effectiveness of development policies and programs. It has been established that evaluations improve program efficiency and effectiveness, strengthen budgeting planning and financial management, and provide a rationale for investment decisions.
“However, despite the importance of evidences, problems hinder practice of evaluation, including methodology, capacity, and resources to better plan and manage evaluation. The evaluation science in itself in early stages has to deal with inherent challenges including measurements, conflicting timelines to generate and use evidence, and linking evaluation findings to decision making,” said Mr. Konishi. “That is why we hold this workshop aiming to acquaint decision-makers like you with a methodology on how evaluation can be used for better policymaking.”
According to Dr. Li of AFDI, in order to improve policymaking, we not only need to learn from the past, advocate learning by doing, but also should have clear vision and base our policymaking on solid evidence, that’s why the learning on M&E is important.
China puts great emphasis on the capacity building and establishment of performance evaluation system at all levels of government. “Last year, Chinese government issued a decision to comprehensively deepen reform. Recently, the newly amended budget law was passed at the congress. All these measures aim to build a modern governance system in China,” said Dr. Li.
The workshop attracted 56 participants from the Ministry of Finance as well as line ministries of 13 countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia, including 20 participants from local Guangxi Finance Department and other prefecture-level finance bureaus in Guangxi. The core instructors of this workshop are from the International Initiative on Impact Evaluation (3ie), Independent Evaluation Department of the ADB, Shanghai Finance Bureau, etc.
The workshop will discuss evaluation theory and methodology to understand program and/or policy impacts. It will also arrange a field trip to the Ecological Protection Project at Qingxiu Mountain Forest Park in Nanning city, which is a subcomponent of the ADB loan project on urban improvement in Nanning. Through the trip, participants will have a better understanding of how program impact can be evaluated for the purpose of delivering greater benefits for citizens and for better policymaking by governments.
This is the 13th joint endeavor between AFDI and APCoP on capacity building programs related to M&E and results-based Public Sector Management. From 2007 to October 2014, AFDI and APCoP had jointly held 12 training workshops on the above themes in various locations in China. These training programs benefited about 500 senior government officials from 26 countries in the region.
