In 2006, when a CGD working group published its report When Will We Ever Learn?: Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation, very few social programs benefitted from studies that could determine whether they actually make a difference. Since then, there has been tremendous progress in harnessing better evidence to inform public policy decision making, especially from impact evaluations of programs in low- and middle-income countries. Impact evaluation is a rigorous approach that establishes the attributable net impact of a project or program, making it uniquely well suited to inform decision making about resource allocation, program design, and scale up or drawdown.

But the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on an unfinished agenda, underscoring the need for high-quality, timely, and context-specific evidence. The pandemic has demonstrated the cost in lives and livelihoods when policymakers make decisions based on incomplete or outdated evidence and data. Given the potential real-world benefits, why have decision makers within governments, aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs not yet fully harnessed the value of evidence—including from impact evaluations—for better public policies? Looking ahead, how can the development community renew momentum and broaden bases of support for impact evaluation and the wider evidence agenda?

In response to these questions and building on progress to date, CGD launched the Working Group on New Evidence Tools for Policy Impact from 2020 to 2022, bringing together 40 policymakers and experts from 20 countries with collective experience at over 100 organizations to review progress, identify challenges, and propose recommendations to enhance the policy value and use of data and evidence for global development, with a focus on impact evaluation. While the group highlighted that impact evaluation is far from the only evidence tool available to policymakers to understand what is working and why, it is also clear that impact evaluation is underutilized given its potential to improve and save lives through learning and improved decisions about policies and programs.

The working group’s final report highlights how far the field has come in addressing persistent critiques about the scale, generalizability, and policy utility of impact evaluation methods. By spotlighting dozens of resources and examples of good practice and policy impact, the report helps ensure we benefit from—and avoid rehashing—well-developed contributions. Across the recommendations, a core theme is the importance of shifting research agenda-setting power and resources to those who best specific policy contexts and decision making needs.

To illustrate the application of the working group’s agenda to specific development funders, the working group developed detailed recommendations for three key audiences with strong existing foundations for evaluation and evidence use to complement and leverage country government funding: philanthropies, USAID, and the World Bank.

Complementary Materials

• Press release
• Final Report: Breakthrough to Policy Use Reinvigorating Impact Evaluation for Global Development
• Summary Brief: Reinvigorating Impact Evaluation for Global Development
• Social media toolkit: with sample tweets and posts, key messages, and more
• Meeting Policymakers Where They Are: Evidence-to-Policy and Practice Partnership Models
• Rapid and Rigorous Impact Evaluation: Advances in the Methods and Data Available for Timely and Cost-Efficient Evaluation
• Timeline: A Look Back at Two Decades of Progress in the Impact Evaluation Landscape
• Working Group Video Playlist: Working Group Overview: Reinvigorating Impact Evaluation for Development