In October 2023, 3ie created the Global Evidence Commitment, a statement signed by seven leading international development institutions to date (FCDO, IDB, KfW, MCC, Norad, USAID, 3ie)* to improve their organizational use of rigorous evidence in decision-making. Today, we offer thoughts on the levers these and likeminded organizations can use to improve their culture of evidence use. We call this the TRIPS Framework – i.e., Training, Resources, Incentives, Processes and Signals. Actions that align with this framework can help bring about substantive long-term, holistic change.
Many organizations – some of which have also joined 3ie on the Global Evidence Commitment pledge – have introduced promising measures that identify with the core TRIPS principles. These include training staff on the use and production of different types of evidence throughout the program and project cycle, providing easy access to evidence and tools, making the requisite resources such as funding available to ensure the collection and use of appropriate data and evidence, providing staff incentives to seek evidence and share lessons, reinforce processes that require programs to be informed by the best available evidence and that contribute with new lessons, and signals set by leadership and consistently reinforced for prioritizing an evidence culture.
The five levers that constitute the framework offer institutions an organizing structure to reflect on how to improve the development effectiveness of their work. There is evidence to suggest that none of the levers will work well in isolation; however, which levers to push and in what sequence will probably vary from one organizational setting to another. What will be essential is for institutions who introduce TRIPS measures to assess how well these are working in strengthening their evidence culture, and sharing these lessons with the wider community.
Within 3ie, for example, we are documenting and disseminating the learning from our contribution analysis approach which we deploy to measure the use and impact of the research evidence we produce. We turn this into training material for program managers and researchers within 3ie and outside so that they can use this learning to improve how they promote, monitor, and measure research influence. Our latest learning brief provides key takeaways in terms of the information-gathering exercise, limitations of the approach as well as factors promoting evidence use. In addition to training, we are in the process of pushing several of the other levers, including signals, processes, and incentives to ensure that we are able to capture and learn from the use made of our work. I hope to share lessons learned in the future!
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*Full names of the organizations
FCDO: Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
IDB: Inter-American Development Bank
KfW: Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau
MCC: Millennium Challenge Corporation
Norad: Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation
USAID: United States Agency for International Development
3ie: International Initiative for Impact Evaluation
