IDEAS Global Assembly 2009 was held from March 18 – 20, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference was preceded by professional development workshops on March 17.
The theme of the assembly was Getting to Results: Evaluation Capacity Building and Development
The Assembly focused on the issues involved in evaluation capacity building, how such efforts can strengthen the evidence available to organizations and countries to inform their own development, and what we know of good practices in this area. Capacity building has been recognized now for a decade or more as crucial to development. The measurement (and management) issues embedded in generating and disseminating evaluative information are now understood to be critical to informing decision making.
The theme of the global assembly underscored the role that evaluative knowledge can play in development in general, and examined how to build and sustain capacity to bring evaluative knowledge into the decision making process so as to enhance the achievement of results. Thus, the theme of evaluation capacity building encompassed issues of knowledge creation, knowledge transmission, knowledge synthesis, and sustainability.
Key papers and presentations from the Global Assembly were collected in a book published by the World Bank; this was made possible by generous support from the donors to the 2009 Assembly.
