The realities of the policy making environment, the perpetual drive for new ideas and initiatives, and the challenges of cost-effectively estimating the impact of policies or programmes, means that policy evaluations are under-utilised as a way of working, strategic learning, driving change and celebrating successes.
According to the National Audit Office, only 8% of ‘major government projects’ are robustly evaluated, while 64% are not evaluated at all. There remain many barriers to undertaking and using evaluative evidence, including lack of political demand, lack of incentives for departments and capacity concerns. Other sectors face different or additional challenges.
The consequence is that it is not always clear how policies are making a difference to the lives of citizens and communities. Policy evaluations and social impact assessments are a vital tool for improving citizen services, resources, opportunities and outcomes – and learning lessons play an important role in the durability, coherence and legitimacy of policies.
Understanding Society’s new policy evaluation project aims to enhance the awareness amongst researchers and policy audiences of using multi-topic panel data in policy evaluations. The project includes a combination of events on policy evaluation, call for Policy Evaluation Fellows and sharing use cases/findings.
This will support wider initiatives such as What Works Network, changes to HM Treasury’s Green Book and Magenta Book and the establishment of the Evaluation Task Force (Cabinet Office).
Objectives of the event
- To raise awareness of the appropriate use of panel data like Understanding Society data in facilitating evaluations, including the wider effects of policy
- To discuss how data linkage and complex systems thinking can support evaluations
- To debate how evaluative practice could play a bigger role in social learning, transforming policy and improving citizen outcomes and wellbeing.
Who is the event for?
Policy professionals and analysts from government departments and devolved nations, academic researchers and PhD students, funding bodies/Foundations, What Works Centres, economic consultancies, social value and impact specialists, evaluation commissioners and managers, specialist evaluation networks, charities and long-term investors.
Event format
This is a hybrid event, taking place at Broadway House, London, and online. Registration is now closed for this event.
Programme
9.00 – 9.30: Registration
9.30 – 9.40: Introduction, Chair – Raj Patel, Associate Director of Policy, Understanding Society
9.40 – 10.05: Keynote speaker: The ‘Levelling Up’ Strategy (England): how will we know if it’s beginning to work? Andy Haldane, Chief Executive, Royal Society of Arts and Chair of the Levelling Up Advisory Council
10.05 – 10.30: Assessing the impact of policies on wellbeing: Levelling up Mission 8 and beyond. Nancy Hey, Executive Director, What Works Centre for Wellbeing (WWCW)
10.30 – 10.50: Q&A
10.50 – 11.10: Break
11.10 – 11.40: Policy evaluations using longitudinal data: what’s the counterfactual? Sashka Dimova, Research Director, National Centre for Social Research (NatCen)
11.40 – 12.10: How can linking survey and administrative data facilitate better evaluation? Helen Gray, Chief Economist, Learning and Work Institute
12.10 – 12.25: Q&A
12.25 – 13.15: Lunch
13.15 – 13.45 Systems approaches to evaluating health policy. Petra Meier, Professor of Public Health, MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow
13.45 – 14.00: Q&A
14.00 – 14.40: Assessing the impact of tax and benefits policy
Parallel sessions (choice of two sessions)
Session 1: Boosting benefit take-up: longitudinal analysis using UK MOD-UKHLS. Professor Matteo Richiardi, Director, Centre for Microsimulation and Policy Analysis, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex
Session 2: Did the ‘bedroom tax’ work? Professor Stephen Gibbons, Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science
14.40 – 15.00: Break
15.00 – 15.55: How can evaluations be more transformative of social learning and policy? Panel debate:
- Steven Finch, Head of Evaluation, Analysis Directorate, Department for Transport and Chair of the Cross Government Evaluation Group (CGEG)
- Nigel Gilbert, Professor of Sociology and Director, Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus, University of Surrey
- Helen Gray, Chief Economist, Learning and Work Institute
- Aoife O’Higgins, Director of Research, What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC)
15.55 – 16.00: Final remarks
16.00: End
