aes24 International Evaluation Conference

Authors: Shefton Parker, Monash Univeristy; Amanda Sampson, Monash Univeristy

Increasingly, turbulent, and rapidly changing global operating environments are disrupting organisational plan implementation and strategy realisation of institutions. The session introduces a novel organisational collaborative strategic learning and effectiveness model, intended to bolster organisational resilience responses amidst such turbulence.
A scarcity of suitable organisational strategic learning systems thinking models utilising evaluation methodology in a joined-up way, prompted the presenters to develop a model. The model is tailored for strategic implementation in a complex organisational system environment, operating across decentralised portfolios with multiple planning and operational layers. The model amalgamates evaluation methodologies to identify, capture, share and respond to strategic learning in a complex system. It is hypothesised the model will outperform conventional organisational performance-based reporting systems, in terms of organisational responsiveness, agility, adaptability, collaboration, and strategic effectiveness.
The presentation highlights the potential value of integrating and embedding evaluation approaches into an organisation's strategy, governance and operations using a three-pronged approach:
- Sensing: Gathering relevant, useful timely data (learning);
- Making sense: Analysing and contextualising learning data alongside other relevant data (institutional performance data, emerging trends, policy, and legislative reform etc); and
- Good sense decisions: Providing timely and relevant evaluative intelligence and insights to support evidence based good decision making.
The presenters advocate for a shift from viewing evaluation use as a 'nice to have' to a 'must have' aspect of organisational growth and sustainability. The model aims to foster a leadership culture where decision makers value the insights that contextualised holistic organisational intelligence can provide for;

i) Strategic planning: Enhanced planning and strategic alignment across portfolios;

ii) Operational efficiency: Reducing duplication in strategic effort and better collaboration towards strategic outcomes;

iii) Business resilience and sustainability: Improved identification and quicker response to emerging opportunities and challenges; and

iv) Strategic effectiveness: Informing activity adaptation recommendations for strategic goal realisation.

Authors: Justine Smith (Nation Partners )

There is a pressing need to reduce the risks associated with climate change and the disasters that are likely to increase as a result. Along with the need to take action, comes the need to show we are making a difference - or perhaps more importantly the need to learn and evolve to ensure we are making a difference. However when operating in an ever changing, uncertain environment, with layers of complexity and outcomes that may not be realised for some time, or until disaster strikes, evidence of impact is not always easy to collect nor a priority.

Drawing on experience developing evaluation frameworks and delivering evaluation projects in the areas of climate change and disaster and emergency management, I will present some of the challenges and opportunities I have observed. In doing so, I propose that there is no 'one way' to do things. Rather, taking the time to understand what we are evaluating and to continually learn, evolve and adjust how we evaluate is key. This includes having clarity on what we really mean when we are talking about reducing risk and increasing resilience. Ideas I will explore include:

• The concepts of risk reduction and resilience.
• The difference between evaluation for accountability and for genuine learning and improvement.
• Balancing an understanding of and progress towards big picture outcomes with project level, time and funding bound outcomes.
• The challenge and potential benefits of event-based evaluation to learn and improve.

Evaluation has the capacity to contribute positively to action taken to reduce climate change risks and improve our management of disasters and recovery from disasters. As evaluators we too need to be innovative and open-minded in our approaches, to learn from and with those working directly in this space for the benefit of all.

Author Lena Etuk (CIRCA Research, AU)

In this presentation we will outline an approach to culturally inclusive evaluation with people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in Australia, its strengths, and its growth opportunities. This approach fills a critical gap in the way evaluation and research with culturally and linguistically diverse communities is traditionally conducted in Australia.

In this presentation we will explain how the Cultural & Indigenous Research Centre Australia (CIRCA) conducts in-culture and in-language evaluation with diverse cohorts of Australians, and how this practice fits within the broader methodological discourse in evaluation and social science more broadly. We will illustrate how our culturally inclusive methodology is put into practice with findings from CIRCA's own internal research into the way cultural considerations shape our data collection process. We will conclude with reflections on how CIRCA might further draw on and leverage standpoint theory and culturally responsive evaluation as this practice is further refined.

Our key argument is that doing culturally inclusive evaluation is a process that requires reflexivity and learning, alongside strong and transparent institutional processes. Combining these approaches creates systemic ways of acknowledging and working within stratified and unequal social systems, inherent to any research. Our findings will advance knowledge within the field of evaluation about how to engage and represent culturally and linguistically diverse community members across Australia.

Authors: Stephanie Quail (ARTD Consultants), Kathleen De Rooy (ARTD Consultants, AU)

Progress reports and case notes contain rich information about program participants' experiences and frequently describe theoretically important risk and protective factors that are not typically recorded in administrative datasets. However, the unstructured narrative nature of these types of data - and, often, the sheer volume of it - is a barrier for human-drive qualitative analysis of this data. Often, the data cannot be included in evaluations because it is too time and resource intensive to do so.

This paper will describe three approaches to the qualitative analysis of progress reports used to examine within-program trajectories for participants, and the factors important for program success as part of an evaluation of the Queensland Drug and Alcohol Court.

It will explore how we navigated the balance between human and machine-driven qualitative analysis. We will reflect on the benefits and challenges of text-mining - how humans and machines stack up against each other when identifying the sentiment and emotion in text, the strengths and challenges of each approach, the lessons we have learned, and considerations for using these types of approaches to analyse datasets of progress reports in future evaluations.

Authors: Donna-Maree Stephens (Community First Development ),Sharon Babyack (Community First Development, AU)

As First Nations' economies grow and develop, wayfinding of monitoring and evaluation frameworks that meaningfully address the holistic outcomes of First Nations' economic independence are a necessity. Culturally responsive monitoring and evaluation frameworks provide footprints for distinct ways of thinking about the holistic and significant contribution that First Nations' economies make to their communities and the broad Australian economic landscape.
Presenting findings from an organisation with more than 20 years of experience working alongside First Nations' communities and businesses grounded in collective and community focused outcomes, this presentation will highlight key learnings of monitoring and evaluation from First Nations' enterprises. It is an invitation to explore and rethink notions of success by drawing on experiences and Dreams (long-term goals) for community organisations, businesses and journeys towards positive outcomes alongside the role of one culturally responsive monitoring and evaluation approach. Our presentation will provide an overview of our work in the community economic development space and key learnings developed through our monitoring and evaluation yarns with First Nations' enterprises across a national First Nations' economic landscape that includes urban, regional and remote illustrations.

Authors: Mallory Notting (First Person Consulting)

The ACT Government implemented a suite of programs over the ten year period between 2012 and 2022 aiming to increase the rates of students actively travelling to and from school. 102 schools in the ACT participated in at least one of the three programs during this time which targeted well-known barriers to active travel, including parental perceptions of safety and infrastructure around school. The programs were intended to contribute towards a range of broader priorities, including health, safety, and environmental outcomes.

This short-paper session will share learnings from evaluating long-term behaviour change at a population level, based on the school active travel evaluation. The evaluation represents a unique case study, as the evaluators needed to look retrospectively over ten years of program delivery and assess whether the combination of programs had created changes within the system and had resulted in the achievement of wider goals.

The presenter will illustrate that the line between short-term and long-term outcomes is rarely linear or clear, as is the relationship between individual interventions and whole of system change. This will be done by summarising the approach taken for the evaluation and sharing the diversity of information collated for analysis, which included individual program data and attitudinal and infrastructure-level data spanning the whole school environment.

Evaluators are often only able to examine the shorter term outcomes of an intervention, even in complex policy areas, and then rely on a theory of change to illustrate the assumed intended wider impacts. The presenter was able to scrutinise these wider impacts during the active travel evaluation, an opportunity not regularly afforded to evaluators. The lessons from the active travel evaluation are therefore pertinent for other evaluations in complex policy areas and may carry implications for program design as the focus shifts increasingly towards population-level, systems change.

Authors: Rochelle Tobin (Curtin University)

Measuring evaluation capacity building is complex, and there are few examples of quantitative measurement tools to enable evaluators to chart progress. WAAC (WA AIDS Council) and Curtin established a five-year partnership to build evaluation capacity within WAAC. To measure progress, a validated tool (Schwarzman et al. 2019) to assess organisational evaluation capacity was modified and combined with another partnership-based tool (Tobin et al. in press). The survey was administered to WAAC staff at baseline (n = 17) and then one year after the partnership was established (n = 19). Significant improvements were seen in individual skills for evaluation tasks, tools for evaluation and evaluation systems and structures. These tools provide a rigorous approach to tracking progress towards organisational evaluation capacity.

Authors: Katrina Barnes (Clear Horizon), Irene Guijt (Oxfam Great Britain, GB), Chipo Peggah (Oxfam Great Britain, ZW)

Traditional measures of success for international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) have been based on western (and often colonial), theories of change, use of predefined metrics and ways of knowing - rarely fitting local realities and interests. Projectised pre-determined understandings of change, limit honest reflection on larger transformative change, and inhibit meaningful learning and adaptation.

INGOs globally are being challenged to decolonise their knowledge and evaluation processes. Over the past 18 months, Oxfam Great Britain has undergone a journey to redesign how we understand impact, to rebalance and reframe accountability and strengthen learning. This new approach focuses on collective storytelling, sensemaking and regular reflection on practice. We are taking a theory-led approach to make meaning out of signals that systems are shifting across a portfolio of work. Drawing on a bricolage of various evaluation methodologies (Outcome Harvesting-lite, meta-evaluation and synthesis, evaluative rubrics, and impact evaluations) we are slowly building a picture up over time across the organisation, to tell a story of systemic change. We have seen how meaningful and honest evidence and learning processes, have enabled a stronger culture of learning.

Although we are far from the end of this journey, we have learnt some critical lessons and face ongoing challenges. We are not the only ones, many foundations, funders, and philanthropic organisations are going through similar processes as organisations increasingly try to understand their contribution to systems change. These conversations are therefore imperative to the field of evaluation, as organisations navigate new ways to 'evaluate' their own work.

At this presentation, we will start the discussion by sharing Oxfam Great Britain's journey with key challenges faced and lessons learnt. After this, we will invite a Q&A conversation to harvest insights from others also seeking to reimagine organisational learning that is grounded in decolonising knowledge processes and seeking to understand systems change.