Online Executive Education Course on Evaluating Social Programs in Portuguese: A Pilot in Partnership with Brazil’s National School of Public Administration (ENAP)

Brazil’s fiscal crisis has increased government interest in evidence-informed policy design. During a time of budget cuts, this project addresses demand for large-scale capacity building on evidence-informed policymaking and impact evaluation within the Brazilian government at a relatively low cost. Together with Brazil’s National School of Public Administration (ENAP), Claudio Ferraz and J-PAL LAC developed and piloted a Portuguese version of J-PAL’s online Executive Education course Evaluating Social Programs. Nearly 5,800 Brazilian civil servants enrolled in the first iteration of this course, which launched in October 2017, and over 1,400 completed it and received a joint certificate from ENAP and J-PAL. The course will be included in ENAP’s regular course catalogue and offered to thousands of civil servants on a yearly basis. ENAP trains approximately 74,000 civil servants per year through its online courses. To learn more about the MOOC and the partnership with ENAP, see this blog post written by Anna Mortara, former consultant to J-PAL LAC who sat within ENAP's office for a year during the development of the course.