by Guilherme Antonio Calabria Bayma Costa
When I took on the coordination of the Public Policy Evaluation and Data Science Unit (NAPCD) at Recife City Hall in 2021, one of the biggest challenges was to thoroughly understand the impacts of the Compaz Network, a community center policy aimed at preventing violence and promoting social inclusion. In 2022, we had the opportunity to carry out an executive participatory evaluation with the support of Clear Lab, which allowed us to strengthen the culture of evidence-based decision making in municipal management.
On the path towards consolidating evaluation, the 2030 Agenda has given us an imperative mandate: 
Evaluation faces a paradox that is hard to ignore. We have never had so many methodologies, tools, data sources and technical capabilities. However, the effective influence of evaluation on public decision-making remains uneven and, in many contexts, surprisingly limited, with institutional advances and setbacks, steps forward and backward, even in initiatives considered to be benchmarks.
For many years, evaluation was underpinned by a powerful promise: to produce evidence on what works and what does not, in order to guide fairer, more efficient and more democratic public decisions. In this context, evaluation was not merely a technical tool, but a political instrument in the best sense of the term: a means of expanding freedom, strengthening accountability and bringing the exercise of power closer to the public. Knowing the results meant, in theory, empowering people to demand better policies and a more transparent use of resources.
Cities around the world, including many in Latin America, are incorporating artificial intelligence solutions into their urban services: video surveillance and facial recognition systems for public safety, traffic management, citizen services, waste collection and tourism promotion.
A few months ago, I sat for more than two hours with a group of women, listening to their experiences with a social program. There was no recorder running. I held no questionnaire. There was silence, pause, chocolate, and a trust that had taken weeks to build. In that conversation, I learned more about the real determinants of access to health services than from any dataset I had ever processed.
We are pleased to present Episode 14 of the EvalParticipativa podcast, now in its new AI-assisted format. This episode explores an ongoing debate within the field of evaluation, drawing on the 
In contexts of urban vulnerability, evaluation is never neutral. Every evaluation reflects a way of seeing reality, deciding what counts as a problem, what is considered an achievement, and who gets to interpret it. From this perspective came the article 
When we set out to evaluate Co-Inspira, a peacebuilding initiative in Colombia, we knew we were facing an unconventional challenge. This was not about assessing a traditional intervention, but something far more complex: a Systemic Action Research (SAR) process that was, in itself, already a collective exercise in knowledge generation.
What happens when those who have historically been evaluated become co-evaluators? How can such a change be fostered, managed, and capitalized upon? Is it possible to promote participatory evaluation from within public institutions? How?