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Evaluation
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Making Evaluation Synthesis Faster: Lessons from Glocal 2026
What if evaluation synthesis were less time-consuming and made evidence easier to use?
Author/s
PAHO Evaluation Team
Date
16 Jun, 2026

All evaluators know it: evaluation synthesis is often time-intensive and difficult to scale. Reviewing large volumes of evaluation reports and extracting actionable insights is one of the most time-consuming bottlenecks in evaluation work. Making this process faster and more accessible can significantly reduce workload, accelerate analysis and ultimately improve how evidence is used in practice. 

Each year, the Global Evaluation Initiative of the World Bank hosts GLOCAL Evaluation Week, bringing together professionals from around the world to explore how evaluation can improve lives. For the second consecutive year, PAHO’s Evaluation Team contributed to this global conversation, this time addressing this year’s theme, “Evaluation, Evidence, and Trust in the Age of AI”. 

 In collaboration with Data Scientist Thiago Augusto Hernandes Rocha from PAHO’s Evidence and Intelligence for Action in Health (EIH) Department, the session introduced 44 participants from across the Americas to a practical approach for streamlining evaluation synthesis. In this step-by-step workshop using the AI platform Flowise, participants learned how to build a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system capable of organizing and synthesizing information from multiple documents.  

By the end of the session, attendees had an adaptable tool that can be customized to support future evaluation and evidence synthesis efforts. 

Key Highlights 

  • Participants joined from more than 16 countries across and beyond the Americas.
  • Attendees represented academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, the private sector, and government agencies.
  • Twenty participants successfully built their own RAG system during the session. 

 The session showed that AI tools are not only accessible, but can play a practical role in reducing the time and effort required for evaluation synthesis, helping teams focus more on interpretation, learning, and decision-making.  

Missed the Session? 

No worries! The event recording and slides are available below: 

Recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1O8k1K9ja6vFink3LpyqQYEPI5F6_XrrH/view 
Slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19oZIpex5a4ogE5KMFUK7bEt_oK1aD9tu/view