The ACT Government’s commitment to Performance and Accountability – the role of Evaluation

1. Presentation to the Canberra Evaluation Forum Thursday, 21 April 2011. 9:00 am. Pam Davoren DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE, POLICY ACT Chief Minister’s Department The ACT Government’s commitment to Performance and Accountability – the role of Evaluation

2. Today’s Presentation • Background • Overview of the ACT Government’s Performance and Accountability Framework and Evaluation Policy and Guidelines • Assessing and developing evaluation maturity across ACT Government • Implementation challenges

3. Background • The ACT Government agreed to an ongoing program of work, Accountability in Government, in 2008-09. This aimed to: • strengthen the Government’s capacity to deliver policies and service delivery outcomes; • promote agency accountability and performance; and • develop an updated performance and accountability framework for implementation across Government.

4. Where are we coming from... • A set of mechanisms to help: • achieve agreed objectives • drive better performance • ensure accountability for decision-making • This includes: • legislation • plans • performance agreements • reports • review mechanisms

5. Why update the ACT Framework? • Review findings – a range of opportunities for improvement • External requirements - performance and reporting • Benefits - government, agencies, community

6. The process

7. The ACT Government Framework

8. Opportunities to improve... • Clarity and focus of Government priorities • Integration of Government and agency planning, and resource allocation • Usefulness of performance indicators • Performance capacity • Delivery of shared priorities • Accessibility and usefulness of reporting • Evaluation practices

9. Planning

10. Managing

11. Reporting

12. Measuring our Progress Website

13. Reviewing

14. ACT Evaluation Policy and Guidelines • The Evaluation Policy aims to: • improve the efficiency, effectiveness and appropriateness of government services; • and build evaluation maturity across government. • The Evaluation Policy document defines evaluation, outlines the objectives and benefits of evaluation, outlines steps for development evaluation maturity and provides a step by step guide to evaluation.

15. Evaluation Policy • The Evaluation Policy encourages a strategic rather than process-driven approach to evaluation. • The Evaluation Policy requires all agencies to: • Prepare an annual evaluation plan; and • Align evaluation with the funding cycle.

16. Developing Evaluation Maturity

17. Evaluation Guidelines • The guidelines assist agencies in developing evaluation maturity by: • fostering a culture of evaluation; • building evaluation capability; • planning to evaluate; • evaluating strategically; • conducting high standard evaluations; and • making evaluation count.

18. Scaling Evaluation Activity

19. Key Features of the Document • The Evaluation Policy document is flexible, adaptable to support whole-of-government implementation. • Highlights the challenges of evaluation, including: • the distinction between program and policy evaluation; • limited resources for evaluation; • differing levels of reporting and evaluation requirements across agencies; and • differing levels of evaluation maturity across agencies.

20. The Hawke Review • A review of the ACT Public Service initiated by the Chief Minister in 2010 • Dr Allan Hawke AC was asked to review the effectiveness, capacity and structures of the ACT Public Service • The report Governing the City State was presented to Government in early 2011.

21. Implementation Challenges There is a significant body of reform related to these Frameworks. The associated implementation challenges, include: • limited resources; • co-ordination of effort; • external factors; • perceptions of evaluation; • maintaining momentum; and • phasing implementation and coordinating with other reforms.

22. Discussion