EvalFest 2020: Evidence Building for Achieving SDGs – Digital Development and Inclusion
12- 14 February, 2020, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India
Evaluation Community of India (ECOI) announces the organization of EvalFest 2020 a three-day event that builds on the experience of previous EvalFest and aims to contribute to promoting a culture of evaluation through advocacy, and to capacity building by sharing knowledge about best practices, approaches, evaluation methods and innovations that are relevant in the context of global progress towards realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The event is being organized by ECOI in partnership with organizations like NITI Aayog, Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST), Centre for Media Studies (CMS), CARE, OXFAM, 3ie, CLEAR/J-PAL South Asia, UNRC, UN WOMEN, UNFPA & others. ECOI has over 150 members from public and non-government organizations and research and academic institutions within the country, and some overseas members, and is recognized by International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE). It functions as a part of Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST), a non-governmental research organization based in New Delhi conducting research for social change with a focus on livelihood, work and wellbeing of vulnerable communities from a gender perspective. ISST was established in 1980.
The theme that underpins EvalFest 2020 and informs all its sub-events is “Evidence Building for Achieving Sustainable Goals – Digital Development and Inclusion”. Ever since the Global Development Agenda 2030 with the 17 SDGs has been adopted, all nations have been engaged in development programs that are directed to achievement of these goals in the time frame set.
Monitoring and Evaluation, always an important tool of management of progress, has assumed special significance in this context of achieving SDGs. The adoption of Resolution on Monitoring and Evaluation by UN General Assembly has intensified efforts at global, regional and national levels to develop individual and institutional capacities in evaluation at national level and foster an environment in which evidence-based decision-making becomes an accepted norm.
Evaluation of progress towards SDGs poses considerable challenges. These challenges arise out of the huge range of parameters to be monitored, the cross-cutting and occasionally conflicting nature of the goals, and the absence of supporting statistical systems in several countries. ‘Inclusion’ is an important principle underlying the SDGs, the basic idea being that development needs to be universal and reach all sections of people. Social equity and gender equality are particular aspects of the principle of inclusion, and evaluators have developed methods of evaluating progress in these areas. Practically all evaluations today pay attention to equity and gender equality aspects of development programs. SDGs have postulated a more general principle of inclusion ‘No one left behind’, a more difficult aspect to evaluate, calling for information, beyond the scope of normal means of data collection like sample surveys. One of the major challenges in inclusion is to reach the last mile.
Newer methods of assessment are therefore called for and digital technology offers huge scope in this area. Digital technology enables rapid transfer of enormous amounts of data and helps countries to accelerate socioeconomic development, connecting citizens to services and opportunities, and improving governance. Digital methods such as social network analysis offer scope to assess how universal is the reach of development in different sectors.
EvalFest 2020, spread across 3 days expects to bring together specialists in evaluation theory and practice to share knowledge and experience in the following sub-themes:
- Progress on various SDGs globally and in India
- Issues relating to Inclusion: evaluation of social equity, gender equality, universal reach of development
- Use of digital sources of information in evaluation
- New frontiers in evaluation – systems thinking, transformative evaluations, etc.
Please download the programme booklet
Please write to <evalcoi1@gmail.com> for any further information