There has never been a time since the introduction of program evaluation into our public services when training evaluators has been more important.
The problems in the field of Canadian evaluation are significant, not the least of which is its continued inability to deliver on its promises to provide real evidence of program effectiveness. The second challenge has been to provide consistent and rigorous training to evaluators in a way that meets the competencies identified by the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES), and most recently by the Treasury Board of Canada, for federal evaluation.
With regard to the first problem, the Auditor General reported in 2009 that departments were ill-equipped to evaluate all of their programs over a five-year period as required under the new Evaluation Policy. More important, the AG reported that the quality of evaluations was well below their coverage targets, but that “the rate of coverage was even lower because many of the effectiveness evaluations we reviewed did not adequately assess program effectiveness.” These conclusions were reinforced in the fall 2013 report, concluding that federal departments had made some progress toward meeting their coverage targets, but that again, “program evaluators noted constraints in their ability to address program effectiveness” (s.1.84).
Scholar Donald Savoie has written that despite significant federal investment in evaluation, the “contribution to the government’s policy and decision-making was negligible” and that “little has changed…apart from the fact that more money and staff are now being dedicated to the evaluation industry.” Most damning, however, he contends that managers and decision makers attribute limited currency to evaluation to value programs appropriately and realistically due to various conceptual problems in the field.
I argue that federal evaluation, at least, does not engage in the right questions nor does it have the capacity or training to engage appropriately in those questions, especially effectiveness, leading to major concerns about the entire legitimacy of the federal evaluation function.
These effectiveness challenges are perpetuated by the second problem. The 2009 Auditor General report states that, “despite having increased funding and staffing, the audited departments found it challenging to hire enough qualified, experienced evaluation staff to meet the needs for effectiveness evaluation.”
Funding for federal evaluation has since dropped considerably, but the capacity problem has always loomed large. In fact, we know that of the approximately 500 or so federal internal evaluators, at least half possess less than five-years of experience, and most of that experience is in project management, not actual evaluation research.
The combination of lack of effectiveness and inexperienced evaluators has resulted in a pervasive lack of confidence in the function and the field. Some of this can be attributed to a flawed federal policy, but in fairness these are field-wide issues. The pressure on the field to find evidence-based analysis to guide public policy mounts as provinces, territories and municipalities are now turning to evaluation as a way to guide budgetary decisions.
The challenge with our approach to training is that there is no approach. It is an assemblage of multiple actors working at cross-purposes in an open market. These professional bodies, private and non-profit sector entities, quasi-academic and academic institutions adhere to their own mandates and approaches vigorously. When such actors have come together to share their expertise, it has led to important improvements including the CES Credentialing Program. But without some Canadian vision for addressing a growing demand for evaluation training, we are inviting others to step in where we are divided with products that cost much and offer little.
As Canada inches toward the next federal election, Canadians will be asking what the record has been on some important matters, including social health, environment, employment and the economy. When governmental evaluators are asked what they’ve contributed, can they say more than simply they found “savings” in their existing programs?
Our governmental evaluation units have obsessed with cost reductions long enough: it is time to get back to the knitting and answer questions Canadians actually care about, including whether our tax dollars have been used to resolve public problems.
Getting qualified evaluators into our governmental internal units who understand this must be the first order of business. Providing a competency-based, coordinated, and Canadian approach to training is paramount if this is to happen.
The status quo will not hold: no one, including evaluators themselves, has the patience for it any longer, and the longer this drags on it does a disservice to us all.
