Posted: May 5, 2024: Scheduled for Time: 13h00 CAT - 14h00 CAT Date: 14 May 2024: Developing capacities in parliament for evidence use is a long-term process wherein parliaments themselves, with the help of national governments and regional institutions, must own and lead the process and provide long-term support in order to maintain crucial gains. This is more important in an age where development evaluation has moved from a purely donor-based activity to a tool for optimising on performance improvement and learning for development. The support of governments needs to be more innovative and holistic, focusing on institutional development, individual training, and creating an enabling environment for the promotion of an evaluation culture (OECD-DAC, 2014).
As a public sector institution, parliaments have the fundamental role of ensuring open and free political deliberations and the representation of citizens. Through their core functions of legislation development, representation and Executive performance oversight. This essentially means that parliaments “sit at the centre of the web of domestic accountability” (Menocal and O’Neil, 2012). They hold the executive branch of government to account on behalf of the people, ensuring that government policy and action are both efficient, effective and commensurate with the needs of the public.
Despite interventions to promote evidence use in parliamentary functions, the mainstreaming of evidence use into parliamentary roles remains slow (Kone, 2018), this is mainly due to the following challenges:
- Parliamentarians suffer a high personnel turnover rate due to the electoral nature of their office, such that capacity can be lost after each election.
- When parliamentarians gain skills in evaluation, these skills are lost to their parliament if they lose their electoral seat and/or leave parliament;
- Attracting and keeping parliamentarians interested in evidence has been a major challenge. This issue is manifested through a lack of demand or slow progress to accept different types of evidence (i.e. research, evaluations) as an important tool in effective policy and decision-making process. An 1 African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation additional dynamic is that parliamentarians are often an umbrella institution of political representatives from different political parties, the latter being a key driver of parliamentary decision-making through parliamentary caucuses;
- Lack of resources and capacity to synthesise, translate and use evidence in parliament. Through their law-making powers, parliamentarians are required to use evidence to back up results, expectations and consequences. The law-making function of parliament frequently requires expertise and capacity which is usually provided by under-resourced parliamentary support staff; and
- The risk-reward balance for evaluation capacity building institutions vis-à-vis parliaments at times results in the safer option of investing capacity building efforts in the more permanent Executive institutions.
Objective:
The aim of the webinar is to provide a platform for Parliamentary stakeholders to make the case for investment in the evaluation capacities of parliaments (individual and institutional evaluation capacity building). The webinar also reflects on the capacity development efforts by stakeholders in the parliamentary space looking at some of the challenges facing parliamentarians – both generators and users of evidence. Recommendations on key evaluation capacity development interventions needed by Parliamentarians and Parliamentary staff to build an evaluative culture and evidence use in Parliaments are also provided.
Key Questions:
key questions to be addressed in the webinar include:
i. What have been the common evaluation capacity building initiatives targeted at Parliaments?
ii. How effective have these interventions been in building individual and institutional capacities for evaluation commissioning, undertaking and use
for Parliamentarians and Parliamentary staff?
iii. Why are Parliaments important stakeholders of the evaluative function in state institutions and the national evaluation system?
iv. What are some of the best practices emerging from the Philippians, Uganda and Africa for evaluation capacity building for Parliaments?
v. What opportunities exist for parliamentarians to learn from each other on demand and use of evaluative evidence?
vi. What are key recommendations for donors and evaluation capacity building institutions vis-à-vis capacity building interventions for Parliaments?
Format:
A panel discussion using Zoom Meeting platforms with available interpretation in French and English.
Key Partners:
Twende Mbele, Congress of the Philippines, Parliament of Uganda and the African Parliamentarians’ Network on Development Evaluation (APNODE).
Panelists:
• Dr Romulo Miral - Deputy Secretary General, Congress of the Philippines
• Dr Josephine Watera – Director of the Parliament of Uganda
• Hon. Jérémie Adomahou – Chair of APNODE
Time: 13h00 CAT - 14h00 CAT
Date: 14 May 2024