Prospects for Reform: the forthcoming Indigenous Evaluation Strategy

 

What, must I hold a candle to my shames?

The Merchant of Venice Act 2, scene 6

 

 

The Productivity Commission Inquiry into an Evaluation Strategy is nearing completion. Its Draft Report was issued in early June 2020, and attracted 112 submission. The Final Strategy is scheduled to be submitted in October 2020 (link here).

 

In a previous post (link here), I bought together a series of links to various documents that I have authored or to which I contributed. Submissions on the Draft Strategy closed in early August and are available on the Productivity Commission website (link here). I haven’t reviewed all 66 submissions, but a quick scan suggests that the following submissions are worth a look for those interested: the Independent Members of the Indigenous Evaluation Council of the NIAA; the NIAA; Lateral Economics; APONT; Professor Don Weatherburn; ANTaR; and Ernst & Young.

 

The process from here is that following the publication of the Final Strategy, the Government will consider the recommendations and decide how to respond. There is no obligation on the Government to respond within any set timeframe. Even where it decides to implement recommendations, it may not announce them, nor give reasons. It may of course decide to leave the Strategy on the shelf, unimplemented.

 

Key recommendations in the Draft Report were for a new Office of Indigenous Policy Evaluation and for the creation of an Indigenous Evaluation Council. Many of the submissions referenced above commented on the desirable attributes of one or both of these bodies, as does the Draft Strategy itself.

 

What prompted me to write this post was the recent publication of an article on The Interpreter web site by Professor Stephen Howes from the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy on developments related to the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) within the Department of Foreign Affairs (link here).

 

I don’t propose to summarise his article (it is very short), apart from noting that the Office was established by the 2006 White Paper on Australian Development Assistance; was endorsed by the 2011 Aid Effectiveness Review and supplemented by an Independent Evaluation Committee (IEC); and has been widely seen as making a positive contribution to the quality of Australia’s development assistance.

 

The Howes article reports that the Government has this year abolished the ODE and the associated IEC, and replaced the function with a downgraded departmental evaluation section. Moreover, paralleling the Government’s abolition of the PM’s Indigenous Advisory Council (link here), the Government made no public announcement of its decisions. As a consequence, there has been no justification provided by the Government for the actions taken.

 

These developments raise the obvious question: given the lack of commitment to evaluation of our International Development assistance programs, what level of commitment will the Government muster for the forthcoming recommendations of the Productivity Commission in relation to Indigenous program effectiveness? Or put another way, is the Government signalling that it is not prepared to countenance a truly independent evaluation function for any of its programs, and if so, what are the implications for evaluation of the Indigenous policy domain?