Values and principles

Evaluation values

The essential values for guiding the department's quality evaluations are:

Evaluation is a necessary part of good government
Evaluation is essential to contemporary public sector accountability and sound decision making. It must be clearly linked with, and embedded in, the business planning process. In this way it becomes a normal part of evidence-based management.

Champions lead a commitment to evaluation
Leadership plays a critical role in making evaluation everyone's business. Senior managers, as champions, are in a unique position to instil a commitment to evaluation.

Building capability is essential to achieving high-quality evaluations
The department takes a proactive approach to staff development as part of its commitment to building a highly skilled workforce. Professional development should be results focused where theory informs practice and practice informs theory.

A collaborative approach offers a good mix
The department believes collaborative partnerships between internal staff, and with external evaluators, will lead to the best mix of skills and knowledge. This collaboration builds corporate knowledge, provides high level expertise to assist with complex evaluation methods and boosts stakeholder confidence about the quality and objectivity of evaluations.

Engaging stakeholders works towards mutually beneficial outcomes
Key stakeholders who are involved in, or affected by, the program being evaluated should be involved in the process. It is important for them to be given opportunities to contribute and have their opinions taken seriously.

Consistency is important for shared understanding
Program Logic is a visual way of representing the theory behind a program. The logic assists in understanding the cause-and effect relationships between the program's issues, resources, activities and intended outcomes. It is the department's preferred evaluation framework as it develops a consistent approach for integrating planning, implementation, evaluation and reporting.

Ethical standards are critical for a high benchmark of professionalism
Evaluations should be honest, participatory, sensitive to context, and culturally relevant. They should ensure consent and confidentiality and cause no harm. All staff are expected to carry out evaluations with diligence and due care. When commissioning, conducting or reporting on an evaluation, staff should uphold ethical principles outlined in the department's Code of Conduct and those of the Australasian Evaluation Society .

Principles of good evaluation practice

The following principles are integral to good evaluation undertaken by the department:

Evaluations are established at the beginning of programs/projects
It is vital that evaluation frameworks are established at the outset of a program, rather than retrofitted at a later stage, to ensure critical data collection junctures and opportunities for stakeholder participation are not missed. Building evaluation into a program's design assists with the development of quality measures, ensures appropriate resources are allocated to the evaluation process, and encourages ownership of and commitment to the program and its planned outcomes.

Appropriate resources for evaluations
Resources allocated to an evaluation should be realistic and take into account what is feasible in order to achieve and deliver within timeframe and budget restraints. As a guide, the Australasian Evaluation Society suggests that 10 per cent of the program budget be spent on evaluation. This is a useful rule of thumb, but the budget for each evaluation must be considered on its individual needs.

Evaluations have formative and summative components
Formative evaluations focus on improving a program while summative evaluations examine the effects or outcomes. Evaluations with both formative and summative purposes link a focus on the process of program delivery with a focus on the outputs and outcomes that the program's activities aim to achieve.

A range of methods is used for evaluations
No single method can appropriately analyse complex social programs. A robust evaluation methodology uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches to inform the findings. Evaluations should also use existing operational data where appropriate.

Evaluation findings are used to inform decision making
Comprehensive and timely communication of evaluation findings helps transfer learnings and outcomes to inform future decision making, in particular through planning processes. Any publication of evaluation findings must consider privacy issues. The accountable officer is responsible for determining whether the information should be published in accordance with the Right to Information Act 2009 and the Information Privacy Act 2009.