Building Evaluation Capital in Government: A Queensland Departmental Approach
| Author | Sarah Goswami,Vicki Lane |
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X1701700405 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Practice Article |
39
Goswami, Lane—Building evaluation capital in government: a Queensland departmental approach
PRACTICE ARTICLE Evaluation Journal of Australasia Vol 17 | No 4 | 2017 | pp. 39–49
Increasingly, government departments are
being held accountable for investment in
public services. In Queensland the Financial
Accountability Act 2009 (Queensland Treasury,
2016) requires that accountable ocers and
statutory bodies ‘achieve reasonable value
for money by ensuring the operations of the
department or statutory body are carried
out eciently, eectively and economically’
(Section 61).
Whilst there is a directive for agencies
to evaluate and demonstrate value for
money, it has in practice been dicult to
embed long term, as many systems and
decision makers have neglected the role of
organisation-wide evaluation capital.
This paper will outline the work being
undertaken in the Queensland Department
of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) to
implement an Impact and Investment
Framework, which will support and embed
evaluation in a multidisciplinary setting. A
central tenant of this framework is ‘business
empowerment and learning’—building the
evaluation culture in the organisation by
rst establishing evaluation building blocks,
through business empowerment, support
and utility.
The framework is comprised of ve key
elements and is built on the principles of
evaluation and evaluation capacity building
disciplines. It has been designed to be
SARAH GOSWAMI | VICKI LANE
Building evaluation capital in government:
a Queensland departmental approach
low-cost, eective and ecient, whilst
enabling business improvement, meeting
accountability needs and allowing the
department to demonstrate the value of
its work.
Context: challenges to building evaluation
capital
To understand why the Impact and Investment
Framework was the chosen model to mainstream
evaluation in the DAF it is first necessary to set the scene.
Two main elements will be discussed—firstly, an overview
of the Australian Government reform agenda which gave
a greater focus on results, followed by how it links to the
Queensland experience in evaluation.
The reform agenda
The Australian Government’s public sector management
agenda can be described in terms of successive models of
reform (Christensen & Lægried, 2007). The first phase
beginning in the 1980s focused on management and
performance, with a key driver being the introduction
of the Financial Management Improvement Program
in 1984 (Barrett, 2004). The program had the aim of
improving public service management and accountability
through a focus on ‘managing for results’ and ‘program
management’, shifting the focus away from inputs and
processes. The next model of reform aligns with the new
public management model, which placed renewed focus
on value for money service provision (Hood, 1989; Pollitt,
1993). It expanded beyond demonstrating eectiveness to
also consider the eciency question of value for money.
In the 2000s the new public management model has
been somewhat replaced by a focus on governance and
accountability; ensuring accountability for the delivery of
intended outcomes. This model has more recently been
To continue reading
Request your trial