Five project submissions have been selected as the best in evaluating the impact of institutional reforms, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) announced today. The winning projects will look at a range of areas, from prison rehabilitation in Chile to improving the business climate in Buenos Aires and citizen participation in Lima.
A committee of experts selected the winning projects from a group of 24 finalist submissions. A total of 131 proposals were received from 19 Latin American and Caribbean countries, involving 124 different organizations.
Measuring Institutional Impact in the Region of the Americas (MIRA) is a grant competition for public or private organizations to perform impact evaluations of public sector institutional capacity building interventions or activities in the Latin American and Caribbean region. The initiative seeks to bridge the knowledge gap existing in the institutional capacity building impact evaluation field, contributing with case studies demonstrating how better institutional capacity helps achieve development outcomes.
The winning organizations are:
- "Evaluation of traditional versus private prison system in reducing crime recurrence." Chile, Gendarmería - Paz Ciudadana.
- “Impact assessment of business climate improving programs. Evidence from the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.” Argentina, Dirección General de Promoción de Inversiones del Ministerio de Desarrollo Económico – CIPPEC
- "From citizen participation to policy: How “Neighborly Houses” program impacts policy and improves public access to municipal services." Perú, Lima Metropolitan Municipality - FORO Nacional Internacional.
- "Impact Assessment of the New Metropolitan Police of the City of Buenos Aires." Argentina, Metropolitan Police - Asociación Civil Observatorio Social.
- “Impact Assessment on Territorial Financial Information System (FOSIT)” Colombia, Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito - Facultad de Ciencias Económicas, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.
The winning organizations will be funded with up to $50,000 to implement their evaluation proposals. Once the evaluations are completed, up to three will be selected for an additional $25,000, to ensure the projects can be used as models throughout the region.
The committee of experts was made up by Inder Ruprah (IDB), Eduardo Lora (IDB), Francisco Mejia (IDB), Ferdinando Regalia (IDB), Tracy Betts (IDB), Michael Barzelay (London School of Economics), Ian Craig Davies (European Evaluation Society), Carol Graham (Brookings - University of Maryland), Carlos Osorio (Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez), Lawrence Sherman (Cambridge - University of Maryland) Mario Marcel (OECD), and the MIRA Team of IDB specialists on institutional capacity (Paloma Baena, Ana Basco, Gustavo Beliz, Santiago Edwards, Jorge Srur and Ariel Zaltsman).