In-depth insights into the impact assessment of governance programmes were provided at the final workshop ‘Making the most out of it: Impact assessments of governance programmes’ of the ‘Impact Initiative Governance’ that was jointly organised by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE).
The workshop took place on 18 September at the Berlin Representation of GIZ and opened up room for exchange on experiences of different impact measurements, on rigorous methods and approaches as well as on institutional and structural incentives and impediments for enhancing the use of rigorous methods for the impact assessment of governance interventions. National and international experts from both the practitioners’ field of governance support and the academic debate around impact assessment came together for this vivid exchange, including participants from organisations such as the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) Network, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Federal Foreign Office, the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval), the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).
In the course of the workshop, participants gained insights on the current technical but also political importance of impact assessment and learning processes as common goods. In addition, a need for synthesis reports and bundling of results of different projects has been identified as one of the main challenges.