4.5.3 Building Awareness and Capacity of Parliamentarians on Evaluation

Parliaments around the world have the power to create real change for people by strengthening the demand for evaluation.
 
• Several CSOs, VOPEs and other stakeholders pro-actively engage with parliamentarians. However this engagement must be a long-term process that is built into evaluation advocacy strategies.
 
• Engaging with parliamentarians requires a thorough understanding of the political and policymaking environment, ways in which the parliament functions and the level to which parliamentarians currently use evaluation and evaluative thinking in decision-making.
 
• Depending on your context, identify strategic entry points for engaging with parliamentarians, such as through parliamentary leadership, parliamentary committees, individual parliamentarians, and parliamentary caucuses. Look out for pending bills related to evaluation that can be used as an entry point to start a discussion.
 
• A promising movement is the Parliamentarians Forum on Development Evaluation in South Asia that is supporting parliamentarians to take the lead to advocate for national evaluation policies in South Asia. Other initiatives include a project on ‘Engaging Parliamentarians for an Innovative Evaluation Culture’, which won EvalPartners Innovation Challenge in 2013.