As reported in the February Update, KSI has together with KSI partner SurveyMETER tested and presented a new methodology to estimate the return on investment of policy research. After presenting this methodology DFAT, the World Bank’s Social Development team asked KSI (Tanty Djafar and Arnaldo Pellini) to hold a follow-up discussion met with the World Bank Social Development team on 5 April 2017.
The World Bank is undergoing a transition to align its social development programmes to the new GOI priorities. In particular, the team is looking for ways to complement their M&E framework with monitoring and learning about evidence-informed policy change. The World Bank has a number of programmes on social development and community development which are coming to an end. The questions they face are: what do they all add up to? What policy changes have they contributed to? There are various drivers underpinning these questions: the emphasis to ‘think and work politically’, the findings from the latest World Development Report 2017 and funders’ demands to show policy change/impact.
KSI presented ways to develop a strategy to influence policy and some of the monitoring and learning tools adopted by KSI, including Rapid Outcome Mapping Assessment (ROMA), and shared the use of tools such as policy problem definition, the Alignment, Interest and Influence matrix, Theory of Change and how to measure policy impact, including Ingie Hovland’s framework with its five areas of monitoring and learning along with the different tools that can be used in each area. The discussion touched upon what to measure when we talk about policy change or influence (i.e., change in policy itself, change in regulation, change in attitudes/perception, change in discourse, and change in behaviour).
This meeting reflects one of KSI’s potential underpinning role for other development programs in Indonesia. KSI’s wealth of knowledge on evidence-based policymaking, knowledge-to-policy processes and experience, and working politically in the context of Indonesia, can be brought in for instance by KSI strategic partner, Aliansi Riset Kebijakan (ARK) Indonesia. Moving forward KSI will share resources with the WB team and provide links to tools they may need.