Sri Lanka hosts the first global 'evaluation' conference
by Melani Manel Perera

The event is called "EvalColombo 2018" and ends tomorrow. 150 parliamentarians from all over the world are participating, as well as experts on evaluation policies, interest groups and members of civil society.


Colombo (AsiaNews) - It is called "EvalColombo 2018" and is hosted by Sri Lanka: it is the first global conference on "evaluation". The event started yesterday and will last until tomorrow. After 17 years of preparation, the "National Evaluation Policy" was launched yesterday by Prime Minister of Sri Lanka Ranil Wickremasinghe.

The three-day conference is underway at the Colombo Hilton hotel at the Sri Lankan Parliament. The event is attended by 150 parliamentarians from around the world, as well as experts on evaluation policies, interest groups, members of civil society and development partners.

"Evaluation" means a systematic evaluation process, in which integrated social research methods are used to examine the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of a project. This approach of integrated methods helps to generate comprehensive and credible results in the evaluation of a project.

Among the objectives of the conference are: to promote dialogue between parliamentarians, government, evaluation experts and civil society, in order to encourage the sharing of evaluation processes in political decisions; share success stories that demonstrate how assessment can be used by MPs in a constructive manner; support the increase of regional networks of parliamentarians that use evaluation policies as an integral part of their decision-making process.