Full Agenda
Smarter Risks, Bigger Impact: How Evidence Mobilization Supports Better Decisions
This session will explore how development institutions can increase impact by mobilizing evidence more effectively and making smarter risk decisions. Drawing on insights from evaluation, evidence synthesis, and impact investing, Ken Chomitz will examine why projects succeed or fail, how AI can transform the use of evidence in project design, and why a portfolio approach to risk-taking is essential for achieving greater development results.
World Health Organization
Participants will gain practical insights on how evaluation evidence can be embedded into decision-making systems by aligning timing, incentives, and partnerships. The session will highlight lessons on overcoming institutional barriers, strengthening feedback loops, balancing independence and influence, and using synthesis and collaboration to improve learning, accountability, and policy and operational effectiveness.
Independent Evaluation Department, Asian Development Bank
Explore how countries across Asia and the Pacific, from those with mature evidence systems to those still struggling to institutionalize evidence use, are strengthening evidence-informed decision-making, and identify practical lessons for advancing reforms, budgeting, and development results.
World Bank
Participants will leave with a concrete understanding of the evidence base on E&S development returns, the measurement gaps that currently obscure that evidence, and practical recommendations for how evaluation can drive smarter allocation of E&S resources across the project cycle.
Asia-Pacific Finance Development Institute
Participants will learn about China’s localized explorations of applying AI to performance evaluation of public funds, including China’s AI industry trends and public governance application, local innovative practices in evaluation projects in areas such as ecological governance, infrastructure and public energy conservation, and macro approaches for AI enabled performance evaluation of fiscal expenditure.
New Development Bank
Participants will gain practical insights into how development institutions can strengthen the use of evaluation evidence in decision-making through effective institutional mechanisms, incentives, and learning systems. Drawing on experiences from MDBs and government institutions, participants will better understand how evaluation evidence can support both organizational learning and more informed operational and strategic decisions.
Asia-Pacific Finance Development Institute
This session will share China's practice of leveraging digital public finance to empower performance evaluation, reviewing the country's reform efforts to reshape public fund performance evaluation processes through digital and intelligent means within an integrated budget management framework.
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Participants will gain practical insights into how evaluation systems can transform evidence into action by strengthening the links between findings, recommendations, management follow-up, and organizational learning and leveraging innovation and partnerships in evaluation to balance speed, scale and quality, and strengthening the use of evidence in decision-making.
Independent Evaluation Department, Asian Development Bank
Participants will explore what recent evidence and experience suggest about how development institutions can better respond to vulnerability and support resilience in small island developing states (SIDS) and fragile contexts. Drawing on IED’s Waves of Resilience SIDS evaluation, ADB’s fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS) and SIDS Approach Action Plan 2026–2030, country experience, climate-finance evidence, and private sector perspectives, the session will examine how differentiated approaches can better reflect country context, how institutional capacity can be strengthened and sustained over time, and how private sector development and economic opportunity can contribute to resilience in small and vulnerable economies
Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office, NITI Aayog and International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
Participants will gain insights into how governments, multilateral organizations, development finance institutions, and development partners are leveraging data systems to strengthen evidence use, support adaptive decision-making, and improve development effectiveness, including lessons from embedding data systems and leveraging evaluations within the context of a large-scale, multi-partner development initiative.
European Investment Bank
Participants will gain insights into how the concept of additionality is evolving across international financial institutions, the opportunities and challenges of extending it beyond financing, approaches to assessing and evidencing additionality in practice, and the implications of balancing additionality with other institutional objectives, incentives, and accountability requirements.
Asia Pacific Evaluation Association
APEA works with governments, parliamentarians and VOPES to strengthen evaluation and evidence base decision-making systems. We undertook a research project to understand institutionalization of evidence-based decision-making systems in the Asia Pacific region involving data collection, analysis and mapping. This session will discuss regional trends and share country experiences and its role in improving outcomes and resource use.
CLEAR South Asia
The session will: (i) clarify what “gender-transformative evaluation” means at a systems level. Move beyond generic gender tags to unpack how policies, institutional arrangements, and evaluation standards can explicitly challenge and shift unequal power relations. (ii) Share concrete examples from national and subnational systems: Highlight recent experiences where evaluation evidence influenced gender-related policy or budget decisions- what enabled this, and what held it back. (iii)Explore the role of evaluation units in driving and protecting feminist approaches. Examine how development partners and central evaluation offices can use mandates, guidance, and partnerships to nudge systems toward more ambitious gender agendas. (iv)Identify practical pathways for countries in the region. Co-develop a short menu of “next steps” that governments and partners can realistically take over the next 3-5 years to embed gender-transformative practices in national M&E systems, including in complex domains such as public safety, climate, and infrastructure.
3ie UNIDO GEF
Participants will learn how evidence can support better policy and resource-allocation decisions at three connected levels: generating credible evidence on programme contributions, embedding evidence within policymaking systems, and delivering timely analysis for consequential decisions. The cases will identify practical conditions that enable evidence to move from analysis to institutional use and action.
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
Participants will learn how evaluation evidence can strengthen energy transition projects by informing financing approaches, improving results measurement, supporting integrated energy planning, and addressing affordability and sustainability challenges. They will gain practical lessons on using evaluation findings to enhance the effectiveness and long-term impact of development investments.
Green Climate Fund
Participants will gain evidence-based insights into what climate finance is delivering and where improvements are still needed, drawing on perspectives from the GCF, ADB and GEF. The session will highlight lessons on institutional performance, implementation, country ownership and gender, and consider how independent evaluation can strengthen future climate finance decision-making and practice.
UNDP and UNFPA
Participants will explore what it means to be an ‘AI-augmented evaluator’, leveraging AI tools to improve efficiency and analytical depth across the evaluation cycle. Through case studies from UNFPA, UNDP, and ADB, attendees will gain insights into practical strategies for adopting AI responsibly, balancing technological speed with the human oversight, ethical transparency, and contextual understanding required for generating high-quality evidence.
OECD
Through a two-way exchange, participants will have an opportunity to reflect on their own use of global evaluation norms (in theory and practice) and contribute to deepening the shared understanding of how global norms can strengthen evaluation quality and use, and enable collaboration across diverse stakeholders and ultimate improve results, while being contextually responsive.
IED and EBRD
This panel discussion will explore how MDBs can remain relevant and add value as client countries become more advanced. Specifically, it will examine: how MDBs can define and demonstrate additionality in increasingly mature markets; what forms of value addition matter most beyond financing; how MDBs can better capture demonstration effects, knowledge transfer, innovation, and policy influence; how engagement strategies should evolve as countries progress economically; and whether existing approaches to measuring value addition are fit for purpose in more advanced economies.
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