Punjab Finance Minister Dr Ayesha Ghous Pasha has said that monitoring and evaluation has a strategic role in policy-making process with the aim to improve relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of policy reforms.
Major pillars of the Punjab government’s growth strategy to make the province secure, economically vibrant, industrialised and knowledge-based need to be supported by an efficient and effective monitoring and evaluation system, she said.
She was addressing the conference titled “Role of Monitoring and Evaluation in Evidence Based Policy Making” arranged by Punjab Planning and Development Department, Directorate General Monitoring and Evaluation in collaboration with UNICEF at Lahore.
Ayesha while addressing the participants of the conference, said that Punjab’s development priorities are fully aligned with those of the federal government, and the Punjab Economic Growth Strategy 2018 and the Federal Government’s Vision 2025 are an outcome of the same strategically evidence-based approach which are also underpinned by Punjab’s Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) 2014-18. Many governments and organisations are now moving from opinion-based policy towards evidence-based policy and are in the stage of evidence-influenced policy because the policy making process is inherently political.
She also told that the said conference will be a memorable and productive platform to share healthy experiences which may ultimately lead the role of monitoring and evaluation towards a successful evidence-based result-oriented policy formulation. That conference will also benefit the target groups to promote the use of evidence derived from evaluations to improve how governments work, and its impact on citizens and so contribute towards eradication of the challenges faced by us.
Punjab Planning and Development Chairman Muhammad Jahanzaib Khan addressing the conference said that the concept of “evidence-based policy making” has been gaining vital importance over recent years. “This use of strong evidence can make a difference to policy-making in many ways including monitoring and evaluating the policy implementation and impact. Evidence-based policy can be defined as an approach that helps people make well-informed decisions about policies, programmes and projects by putting the best available evidence at the heart of policy development and implementation.”
He also said that it is more in line with guidelines of the UN clearly stating that the “evidence-based policy-making refers to a policy process that helps planners make better-informed decisions by putting the best available evidence at the centre of the policy process.” Evidence may include information produced by integrated monitoring and evaluation systems, academic research, historical experience and “good practice” information.
Earlier, Planning and Development Director General (Monitoring and Evaluation), Dr Sajjad Mubin, in his welcome address, said that international year of evaluation is a global movement to foster the demand and use of evaluation to make policies that are evidence-based, equity-focused and gender-responsive. A series of conferences, seminars and workshops have been organised all across the globe. However, this event is of unique importance being the last event of the year. Evaluations and their findings are extremely important in a country where there are constraint resources and ever-expanding needs and demands for services and social benefits of all types and kinds. In this scenario, evaluations can guide us to take wiser decisions to prioritise our needs, measure the results of our efforts and thus, ultimately, attempt to undertake a process of systematic economic uplift in the province for all.
In the conference, eminent professors, scholars, researchers, and practitioners presented their innovative work on cutting edge issues of ME which would enlighten the participants to practice and promote evidence-based equity focused policy and decision making. Balochistan Planning and Development Secretary Zulfiqar Durrani, representative of UNICEF Pakistan Rahama Rihood Mohammad also spoke on the occasion and representatives of other provinces and countries and professors, scholars and researchers also attended the conference.
