IEG's contribution to gLOCAL Evaluation Week includes one session, "Advances in Evaluative Evidence", and one course, "Using Geospatial Data for Evaluation".
03 Jun, 2019 12:00 - 17:00 ( ET ) / 16:00 - 21:00 ( GMT )|
BBL [12-2pm]
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Course [2-5pm]
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The first session discusses advances in evaluative evidence and lessons for evaluation practice. The practices of evaluation in international development, their underlying methods and data, have been evolving at a fast pace. Over the past decade or so, there has been a marked increase in impact evaluation. As a result, the use of systematic reviews of existing evidence, evidence gap maps and brokering evidence for policy-making have been on the rise as well. New developments such as big data and the use of AI in evaluation are starting to make their mark on evaluation practices. At the same time, research on implementation challenges and the complexity of causal change processes urge evaluators to carefully theorize about how interventions work and bring about change. Evaluators will need to continue to draw on a wide range of methods and sources of data to understand these processes as a foundation for evaluative assessment. In this opening event, the Director-General of the Independent Evaluation Group will engage in a conversation with two well-known experts, Howard White and Michael Woolcock, whose combined knowledge covers a broad range of methodological challenges and opportunities for evaluation. One of the fundamental questions she will put on the table is how independent evaluation, and evaluation in the WBG more broadly, can continue to innovate and evolve in light of these developments to further enhance its utility for a better WBG and a better world.
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The second session discusses the use of geospatial data in understanding the World Bank Group’s spatial outreach. The session comprises two parts. In the first part, geospatial targeting of World Bank Group support is discussed from a macro perspective. Using examples from two recent evaluations, the panelists will discuss how existing data at country (state or province) level can be used to develop a broad understanding of questions such as: is the World Bank Group operating in the poorer areas of the country, or; is World Bank Group support (in its aim to reduce poverty and inequality) more pro-poor than national public spending (in similar areas of work)? The panelists first discuss the methodological approach and the potential for this type of analysis. Subsequently, they will reflect on the significant caveats of this type of work such as the granularity of data that is readily available across policy and geographical areas. This sets the scene for the second part of the session where recent work on geospatial data, both on the independent variable side (georeferencing World Bank Group interventions), as well as on the dependent variable side (e.g. recent advances in subnational poverty mapping) will be discussed. Panelists from different parts of the WBG will discuss their recent work and debate the potential for pushing the frontier on using geospatial data to better understand the spatial targeting of World Bank Group support and its capacity to reach the poor.
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