Editorial
| DOI | 10.1177/1035719X19833775 |
| Published date | 01 March 2019 |
| Date | 01 March 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Editorial |
editorial2019
Editorial
Evaluation Journal of Australasia
2019, Vol. 19(1) 3 –7
Editorial
© The Author(s) 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1035719X19833775
DOI: 10.1177/1035719X19833775
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At the AES International Evaluation Conference in September 2017, economist
Nicholas Gruen spoke about his proposal to establish an Evaluator-General for
Australia. Gruen had laid out his vision in an earlier series of thought pieces published
in The Mandarin in May 2016, suggesting that the new role should be established
within its own office and report independently to Parliament, in the way that the
Auditor-General does. Evaluators supporting the office of the Evaluator-General, in
Gruen’s view, would promote evidence-based policy-making, accountability and
transparency, by reporting to both the portfolio agency delivering the program and
deferring to the Evaluator-General (Gruen, 2016).
Gruen’s idea has earlier foreign origins. In Canada in 2012, for example, the
Canadian Government Executive magazine published an article asking ‘do we need
an Evaluator General?’ The authors of the article asserted that ‘the notion of a
strong federal voice on evaluation has been discussed among government execu-
tives and House committees in various forms over the past thirty years’ (D’Aloisio
et al., 2012). A Canadian advocacy group is currently proposing to establish an
Evaluator-General who would report to the Speaker of the House of Commons as
an independent agent of Parliament. Members of Parliament, the unnamed group
argues, could obtain evidence from an Evaluator-General about the achievements
of a government policy or program, with evaluation reports made publicly available
(see evaluatorgeneral.ca) (An Evaluator General for Canada, 2018). In the United
Kingdom, the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury have championed a strategy less
reliant on titular figureheads to increase the transparency and use of evaluation
findings in policy-making. A network of ‘What Works’ centres have been estab-
lished by government to synthesise evaluation evidence and translate and promote
findings for use by practitioners (Gough, Maidment, & Sharples, 2018; National
Audit Office, 2013).
While the proposed ‘Evaluator-General’ role has attracted some interest in
Australia, government in-house evaluation pre-dates the current proposal by around
30 years. In 1988, the Federal Cabinet agreed to a formal evaluation strategy to
gauge program performance and inform improvement efforts and accountability.
The Australian Department of Finance was to drive the strategy, with line depart-
ments carrying ‘primary responsibility for determining evaluation priorities, prepar-
ing evaluation plans, and conducting evaluations’ (Mackay, 2011, p. 4). Under the
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Evaluation Journal of Australasia 19(1)
strategy, each program would be evaluated every 3–5 years; each government port-
folio would prepare annual evaluation plans for major evaluations; new policy pro-
posals were to include evaluation plans; and evaluation reports were to be published
(with some exceptions) with annual parliamentary budget reporting to include eval-
uation findings. Following the release of parliamentary and Australian National
Audit Office (ANAO) reports in 1990 and 1991 highlighting ‘unevenness’ in the
coverage and scope of evaluative evidence by line departments, the Department of
...
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