International conference at Saarland University: Better policy through better evaluation?

The conference will examine the central question of how evaluation can support policymaking by providing data, evidence, and informed assessments.

The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing.

The conference has a dual character. In the national part, 30 forums and working group meetings will cover a wide range of topics dealing with technical and sectoral issues. The international part of the conference is based on the research project of the Centre for Evaluation at Saarland University (CEval). Although evaluation is being used in more and more countries as a tool for evidence-based decision-making in administration and politics, there has been a lack of global overview of the institutionalisation and professionalisation of evaluation. To close this research gap, 50 country case studies and eleven reports from transnational organisations have been published in four volumes in recent years as part of the "CEval Evaluation GLOBE Project" led by Professors Reinhard Stockmann and Wolfgang Meyer (Europe 2020; Americas 2022; Asia-Pacific 2023 and Africa 2025). A total of 137 authors contributed to this project, creating a database that is unique worldwide.  

The results of this mammoth project will be presented and discussed for the first time at the conference at Saarland University. This was also the reason why the annual conference of the German Evaluation Society (DeGEval), which is being held in Saarbrücken for the first time, was expanded to include an extensive international programme. The more than 300 participants at the conference come from over 20 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America, as well as numerous international organisations. This composition promises an intensive exchange, lively debates and groundbreaking ideas for the further development of evaluation, including in German-speaking countries.

In a concluding panel discussion on Friday, 18 September, at 12:30 p.m., representatives of the World Bank, the OECD, the American Evaluation Association and the International Organisation for Cooperation in Evaluation, together with the Saarland Ministry of Finance and Science, Jakob von Weizsäcker, will discuss how scientific findings can be put into practice so that evaluation can be used even more than before for evidence-based policy-making.

Further information and conference programme:

General programme and international programme section 

Answering questions:

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Meyer
Professor of Sociology at Saarland University
Tel. 0681 302-4358
Email: w.meyer(at)mx.uni-saarland.de

Prof. Dr Reinhard Stockmann
Senior Professor of Sociology at Saarland University
Tel. 0681 302-3372 
Email: r.stockmann(at)mx.uni-saarland.de