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Innovation in Government Initiative

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Evidence-based policy report

The Innovation in Government Initiative (IGI) helps low- and middle-income countries implement evidence-based policies, and provides assistance for effective policy scale-up initiatives to improve the lives of people living in extreme poverty. IGI is a project of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), and works closely with J-PAL offices and J-PAL affiliated researchers. We estimate that IGI is at least three times as cost-effective as direct cash transfers and recommend IGI as a high-impact funding opportunity in the area of global health and development. IGI is a successor to the Government Partnership Initiative.

What problem are they trying to solve?

Roughly every tenth person in the world lives on less than $1.90 a day.^¹ That means that although the share of people living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically over the past century, there are hundreds of millions of people suffering in extreme poverty around the world:

Source: Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina (2013). "Global Extreme Poverty". Published online at ourworldindata.org.

As we explain in our report on Evidence-Based Policy, a large fraction of development money comes from local government revenues and flows through social spending programs. Moreover, research shows that the cost-effectiveness of social programs and global health and development interventions varies widely.

This means that finding and implementing effective evidence-based interventions in partnership with local governments can be one of the most effective ways to work on the problem of extreme poverty. IGI’s work helps to “bridge the gap” between innovative academic research on effective interventions and government policy implementation and scale up the most effective solutions.

What do they do?

IGI funds technical assistance to “adapt, pilot, and scale evidence-informed innovations with a strong potential to improve the lives of millions of people living in poverty.”^² In their own words:

“we work with government partners on their policy priorities, helping to determine whether and how evidence is relevant to their context, supporting them in piloting programs leveraging this evidence, and building systems for data-enabled program delivery and monitoring at scale.”^³

This includes running requests for proposals (RFPs) and using their in-house expertise to evaluate the most promising proposed policy projects. Founders Pledge has evaluated two IGI interventions — including a reform to India’s largest social protection program and a scale up of an educational reform initiative in Zambia, now known as Teaching at the Right Level (TARL), which is itself a Founders Pledge recommended charity.

Examples of projects IGI recently funded include projects to boost immunization demand in Haryana, India, to work with the Ministry of Education and the Tutoring Online Project (TOP) in the Dominican Republic, and using mobile phone and satellite data to target Togo's emergency cash transfer program.

This section is based on our Evidence-Based Policy executive summary.

Cost-Effectiveness and Track Record

Our assessment of IGI’s cost-effectiveness is based on an evaluation of their track record. Since its inception, IGI has launched dozens of scale-ups based on evidence uncovered in rigorous randomized controlled trials. Several of these programs have grown to be massively beneficial programs in their own right. Teaching at the Right Level is a highly-cost-effective educational intervention originally scaled up by IGI under its former name, GPI. More recently, IGI has helped to scale up programs to increase reporting of gender-based violence and, in collaboration with the Kenyan Ministry of Health, scaled up a water coupons program to save lives and increase the efficiency of government spending.

IGI implements most of the strategies supported by the literature on implementing evidence-based policy. For example: they require each project to be formally endorsed by decision-makers involved in the relevant policy; they seek to build long-term personal relationships between government and J-PAL researchers; they have a quick turn-around time; and they accept proposals outside their official funding cycle for urgent projects, to take advantage of policy windows.

Organizational strength and transparency

IGI has a lean structure. Decisions about the grants are made by the Advisory Board, which consists of J-PAL affiliated professors. They currently have two staff members, both working for IGI half-time. IGI has been transparent throughout our interactions and provided all data we asked for.

Past Success

We re-evaluated IGI in 2024, focusing on new evidence about their ability to successfully scale up evidence-based policy, which has increased our confidence that IGI remains a high-impact funding opportunity. Based on the base rate of past success and information provided by IGI, we estimate that IGI’s hit-rate of scale-up success is roughly 40%.

Why do we trust this organization?

We have recommended IGI since 2018, and recently re-evaluated their cost-effectiveness. Moreover, IGI has been supported by other organizations whose research on effective giving we trust, including GiveWell.

What would they do with more funding?

In recent conversations, IGI convinced us that they have the ability to scale to be much larger. Historically, IGI has operated on a budget of roughly $1m per year, and is able to launch a scaleup at a cost of roughly $150,000. However, the number of RCTs on which new scaleups could be based is very large —in the hundreds, in fact — and we believe that IGI could scale up significantly based on this pool of RCTs without losing cost-effectiveness. Moreover, we think that IGI could make scaleups more likely to succeed with more funding for each scaleup.

IGI indicated to us that they could use around $5 million per year in the near term, and that with increased funding they could expand their focus significantly in health, social protection, and digitally-enabled scale, as well as launching additional scaleups more generally.

Message from the organization

“We appreciate Founders Pledge’s review of the IGI program and its recommendation. IGI is run by a new Evidence to Scale team at J-PAL that reflects our increasing ambitions to translate research into action. Our goal is to reduce poverty by catalyzing scale of the most innovative, impactful, and cost-effective social programs in collaboration with governments in low- and middle-income countries. We have a strong track record in identifying and supporting opportunities through competitive, flexible funding. The activities IGI enables range from technical support and training to scale a program in the same context after a randomized evaluation, learning journeys for government officials to understand and assess the relevance of innovations rigorously evaluated in other places, adapting evidence-based programs to new contexts, and supporting governments to redesign anti-poverty programs in line with evidence. We will have dozens of opportunities to meaningfully expand this work through 2027 and seek support to fuel the next stage of IGI.”

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Disclaimer: We do not have a reciprocal relationship with any charity, and recommendations are subject to change based on our ongoing research.