Bank Group aims to become a learning organization that leverages the best global knowledge to support development, it sees the pool of evidence from IEs as adding to its knowledge base. IEs are expected to help capture knowledge from the global community and disseminate it broadly to benefit clients, motivate open dialogue on results and learning, enhance learning opportunities for staff, and craft development solutions applicable to different contexts.3
Institutional Efforts to Facilitate Production of Impact Evaluations The creation of DIME in 2005 has been a key institutional effort to facilitate production of IEs at the World Bank. In the first half of the decade, there were few Bank-supported IEs and most were concentrated in a few regions and networks. In 2005, the Bank’s Office of the Chief Economist (DEC) created DIME with the objective of generating knowledge on selected policies. Half a million dollars per year from the Bank’s research budget was set aside to support the conduct of Bank IEs.4 Also in 2005, IE programs were started in the Africa Region and in the Human Development Network (HDN).5 These served as DIME’s implementation backbone. In 2008, the managing director responsible for knowledge and networks transformed DIME into a Bank-wide decentralized program with its own governance structure and a coordinated approach to operational support. In addition, DIME’s mandate was expanded to include institutional development for evidence-based policy and improvement in the quality of Bank operations (World Bank 2010). DIME is coordinated by a steering group with chief economist and director-level representation from networks and regions. It sponsors 15 thematic programs, with the DIME Secretariat in DEC managing global programs in agriculture, finance and private sector, gender,6 fragile states, local development and urban development, as well as africa programs in education, HIV, and malaria. The rollout of additional thematic programs since 2009—in addition to the eight that were already active at the time—has been informed by a Bankwide discussion on priority sectors and themes, and validated by numerous DIME Steering Group meetings, the managing director in charge of Knowledge, Office of the Vice President, and the Committee on Development Effectiveness. Several of these thematic IE programs have adopted the programmatic model promoted by DIME (box 2.1). DIME is not the only initiative to implement IE programs, and some regions and networks have their own history and approach to managing IE production. • The flagship IE program in the Africa Region is the Africa Impact Evaluation Initiative (AIM). AIM is also one of the first coordinated (with fulltime program coordinators and technical advisory support) IE initiatives at the World Bank (box 2.2). • Beginning in 2005, the HDN anchor, with Bank Netherlands Partnership
Impact Evaluations at the World Bank Group
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