The opening ceremony program of “Innovating Public Policy: Use of Evidence”, InnoPolE-II training was held on 20th Chaitra 2079 at Khaptad Hall of Nepal Administrative Staff College (NASC). This second phase of InnoPolE training is the continuous flagship training program of NASC and Policy Research Institute (PRI) and is scheduled from 20th-28th Chaitra 2079. For the opening ceremony, the dignitaries were Dr. Rajan Khanal, Executive Direction of NASC and Mr. Laxman Prasad Bhattarai, Acting Executive Chairperson of PRI.
During the first part of the opening ceremony, Mr. Bhattarai from PRI put his opening remarks. He started his remarks by welcoming the participants at the training program. Mr. Bhattarai first of all briefly introduced about the PRI, its working area and structure. He further added that PRI always advocated on the fact based and evidence based policy research. Mr. Bhattarai also said that PRI now have reached to every ministry though their guideline in policy making process. Regarding the importance of this training program, he said that Nepal lacked technical aspect/knowledge in terms of using evidence during the policy making and designing process, therefore, with the practical knowledge impart in the program will enhance the horizon of evidence based policy research to the participants.
After the opening remarks of the Mr. Bhattarai, there was introductory session by the participants, PRI team/facilitators and NASC team/facilitators.
The introductory session of the program then was followed by the opening remarks of the Dr. Rajan Khanal. Dr. Khanal firstly welcomed all the participants to the training and expressed his amazement with the diverse group of participants and the facilitators team of PRI and NASC. Then he started his remarks by raising the issues of being the current policy formulation and its implementation as an intuitive based rather than fact-based and evidence based. In support to the evidence-based policy research, Dr. Khanal gave the example of medicine discipline where evidence is thought to be initiated. Moreover, he also recalled that the conduction of this training program is based on the MoU between NASC and PRI which mutually agreed to work together with an aim to support the government in effective policy making process. Last but not the least, he requested participants to take this training program as a learning lab to gain the practical knowledge in terms of evidence/fact based policy making process.
The program was hosted by Mr. Rajendra Adhikari, Center Chief, Center for Development and Policy Management (CDPM), GDMLG. The training management team of the program are: Roshani Bhujel and Ganesh Sah.
