Building Capacity to Use Research Evidence program is a series of trainings that aim to increase technical

skills and motivation for the use of data and evidence. Such programs in Pakistan have been conducted
in collaboration with National School of Public Policy in Pakistan and Evidence for Policy Design (EPoD) at
Harvard University. After sufficient research, it has been concluded that five processes are very vital to
this program – assessment, pilot projects, policy dialogues, training, and hands-on participation.

One practical example of such program can be seen in polio campaigns. The reason Pakistan was having
so much trouble did not come down to having enough doses of the vaccines or health workers to
administer them – the country did. A key problem was that information about who was getting
vaccinated was not getting collected, and that the incentives health workers got did not actually
motivate them to perform more vaccinations. The first leg of the pilot project focused on helping get
data about health worker performance to their managers, and helping managers use that information to
improve performance. They used paper maps like the one above, recorded their efforts on paper forms
like the one below, and employed a protocol of writing in chalk on the walls of houses to indicate to
other teams they had been there. The policy-research team tested a system in which, in order to get
that big bonus, the health workers used a custom-designed smartphone app to set their targets for days
1 and 2 of the vaccination campaigns. The incentive structure expected workers to complete roughly
300 vaccinations over the campaign.

In short, projects like these can fill in the policy gaps and can lead up to the development of a better
well-maintained country.