Please join us for Incentivizing the Use of Evaluation Data for Decision Making in Foreign Assistance with Salome Tsereteli-Stephens and Catherine Lena Kelly. This event is co-sponsored by Washington Evaluators, and the American Evaluation Association's Topical Interest Groups on Democracy and Governance, and International / Cross-Cultural Evaluation. 

The brown bag will be held on Friday, July 22 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (5th Floor). Light refreshments will be served.

Incentivizing the Use of Evaluation Data for Decision Making in Foreign Assistance

How can evaluation data be better used by those designing foreign assistance programs and those making policy decisions? Are the information needs of decision makers being met, and do organizations have the right incentive structures to encourage data use for decision making? 

This roundtable discussion will invite participants to share their experiences and knowledge about existing practices to incentivize the use of monitoring and evaluation data in decision making by implementers, partners and donors. Moderators will share their experiences from recent practices at ABA ROLI, specifically related to capacity building programs. Participants are invited to share methodologies, approaches, as well as examples.

Presenters

Salome Tsereteli-Stephens is the program co-chair of AEA's Democracy and Governance Topical Interest Group and Monitoring and Evaluation Manager at the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative. She has worked in the international development field for over 10 years, primarily focusing on rule of law and justice sector reform M&E. Until recently, she was based in the South Caucasus, and over the years has worked with World Vision, GIZ, and Save the Children. She has developed and delivered trainings for implementers in monitoring and evaluation methods and approaches, published research on the issues of rule of law measurement, and conducted and managed a number of evaluations in various sectors of international assistance, including the justice sector reform, legal education, human rights, HIV/AIDS and child protection.

Dr. Catherine Lena Kelly is a Program Analyst in the Monitoring & Evaluation Unit of the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative and an American Council of Learned Societies Public Fellow.  A political scientist by training, she has experience conducting evaluations in Burundi, DRC, Republic of Congo, and Rwanda and has spent nearly two years living in Senegal, Ghana, and Burkina Faso to conduct academic research on party systems and democratization in the region. She has published a variety of articles and reports in the Journal of Democracy, Electoral Studies, and the Journal of Religious and Political Practice, as well as in the Washington Post and on the websites of ABA ROLI, Council on Foreign Relations, and the Social Science Research Council.

Please RSVP in advance, so we know how many attendees to expect.