Building a Culture of Evidence-Based Learning: IRI’s Center for Applied Learning and Global Initiatives

Liz Ruedy is the Director of the Office of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning at the International Republican Institute

A few years back, a joke made the rounds on the internet about how you could describe a smart phone to someone who’d never heard of one: “I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get in to arguments with strangers.”

I’ve been thinking about this joke a lot lately, given the growing focus of the international development community on how we can generate and use evidence, and how “evidence-based” approaches promote organizational learning and increased effectiveness. It’s easy to assume that evidence-based learning is a simple process, with data as the input and learning as the impact. The results chain looks something like this:

But I think we all recognize that generating evidence and making it available doesn’t necessarily mean that the evidence will be used to support learning. That’s because in this results chain, each of those little gray arrows denotes a complex, human-driven process of opportunities, incentives, individual decision-making and organizational culture that can either facilitate or inhibit the process. So, all too often, our results chains in reality end in what is basically an international development equivalent of looking at pictures of cats.

Like this:

Or even this:

So what does this mean for those of us interested in supporting real, evidence-based learning, adaptation and innovation? At IRI, we’ve started talking about what we call a “Learning Loop,” pictured here. The cycle in the center includes program implementation and performance data; research, evaluation and analysis; and thematic and country expertise. These are all sources of evidence, and when the feedback loop works, evidence both informs and results from the loop. Evidence is then linked both to learning, as well as adaptation and innovation.

However, this link is not a passive one. Evidence-based learning and innovation needs to be a deliberate, intentional act, backed up with necessary financial and human resources. This requires organizational commitment and buy-in to produce or identify evidence, as well to vet, analyze and apply evidence to a specific context or development problem. Active engagement with evidence is what makes the learning loop a virtuous cycle, connecting evidence with learning and innovation.

To support this virtuous cycle at IRI, we focused on this “active engagement” as a human-centered process: the opportunities, incentives, individual decision-making and organizational culture that I referenced earlier. About a year ago, we began to discuss a completely new approach to creating opportunities and incentives, supporting individuals and promoting an organizational culture of evidence-based learning. This led, ultimately, to the creation of a new division within IRI - the Center for Applied Learning and Global Initiatives (CALGI), which was launched in January 2016. 

Through the creation of CALGI, IRI has provided resources and deliberately brought together staff dedicated to generating and using evidence for a variety of reasons. We have reorganized existing divisions, adjusted job positions, hired new staff and even redesigned physical office space to encourage communication and collaboration between regional program teams and monitoring and evaluation staff, organizational learning specialists, and thematic experts. My own department, formerly the Office of Monitoring and Evaluation, is now the Office of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (OMEL), comprised of specialists dedicated to evidence-based program design, evaluation, and applied research and learning. However, because we are part of CALGI, OMEL staff now directly support – and are supported by – IRI thematic experts in governance, gender and youth programming; communities of practice dedicated to the major topical areas of IRI’s work; and IRI global programs. This means that as OMEL works with our country programs to generate evidence, we are now, as part of CALGI, also linked with thematic and program experts who are motivated and able to immediately apply that evidence in program decision-making, which is at the core of learning, adaptation and innovation. The involvement of global program staff within CALGI means that this learning and innovation can also be quickly shared with our global networks. 

CALGI is empowered, through resource allocation and buy-in from our leadership on down, to promote evidence-based learning in many different ways: workshops with internal and external experts, brainstorming sessions, publishing research and tools, validation sessions for evaluations and assessments, etc. CALGI is also formally tasked with outreach to outside organizations, researchers and activists looking to build the evidence base for democracy and governance work. IRI realizes that evidence comes from many different sources – academics, donors, implementers, and local experts and beneficiaries, so we need to collaborate and share evidence and learning.

It’s early days yet – CALGI has been operational for about six months and we’re still smoothing out the details of workflows and areas of responsibility. But initial feedback from both CALGI staff and IRI staff across the Institute has been positive. What makes me particularly optimistic about the idea of CALGI is that we’re approaching organizational change the same way we approach our programs in the field: with a healthy appreciation for the complexity of human-driven systems and an understanding that real change doesn’t come from a one-size-fits-all platform or solution. Instead, we’re empowering smart, motivated and passionate people to communicate, collaborate and respond to new ideas and challenges as they emerge. 

Image caption: A recent CALGI workshop brought together staff with regional, technical and M&E expertise to collaborate on a new IRI training tool.