Authors: Duncan Rintoul (UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance (IPPG) ),George Argyrous (UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance (IPPG), AU),Tish Creenaune (UTS Institute for Public Policy and Governance (IPPG), AU),Narina Dahms (ACT Government: Chief Ministers, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, AU),Peter Robinson (ACT Government: Chief Ministers, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, AU),Robert Gotts (ACT Government: Chief Ministers, Treasury and Economic Development Directorate, AU)The ACT Evidence and Evaluation Academy is a prominent and promising example of sustained central agency investment in evaluation capability building (ECB).
The Academy was launched in 2021 as a new initiative to improve the practice and culture of evidence-based decision-making in the ACT public sector. Its features include:
- a competitive application process, requiring executive support and financial co-contribution
- a series of in-person professional learning workshops where participants learn alongside colleagues from other Directorates
- a workplace project, through which participants apply their learning, receive 1-1 coaching, solve an evaluation-related challenge in their work and share their insights back to the group
- executive-level professional learning and practice sharing, for nominated evaluation champions in each Directorate
- sharing of resources and development of evaluation communities of practice in the Directorates
- an annual masterclass, which brings current participants together with alumni and executive champions.
Four years and over 100 participants later, the Academy is still going strong. There has been an ongoing process of evaluation and fine tuning from one cohort to the next, with encouraging evidence of impact. This impact is seen not only for those individuals who have taken part but also for others in their work groups, including in policy areas where evaluation has not historically enjoyed much of a foothold.
The learning design of the Academy brings into focus a number of useful strategies - pedagogical, structural and otherwise - that other central agencies and line agencies may like to consider as part of their own ECB efforts.
The Academy story also highlights some of the exciting opportunities for positioning evaluation at the heart of innovation in the public sector, particularly in the context of whole-of-government wellbeing frameworks, cross-agency collaboration and strategic linkage of data sets to support place-based outcome measurement.
