This document puts forward a number of strong contributions from senior officers in institutions dealing with evidence-based policy making. It tries to bring together the vision and lessons learned from different stakeholders on the strategic role of monitoring and evaluation in evidence-based policy making. These stakeholders are policy-makers, in their role of users of evidence, and researchers and evaluators, in their role of suppliers of evidence. The international community agrees that monitoring and evaluation has a strategic role to play in informing policy making processes. The aim is to improve relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of policy reforms. Given this international community aim, why then is monitoring and evaluation not playing its role to its full potential? What are the factors, in addition to the evidence, influencing the policy making process and outcome? How can the uptake of evidence in policy making be increased? These and other issues are analysed in this publication.