On 23rd June 2026, CECAN hosted its annual conference, under the theme ‘Global Perspectives on Complex Evaluation’. Bringing together policy practitioners, evaluators and academics, this year’s online event looked beyond the UK to examine how public policy evaluation is evolving internationally in an era of complexity, political shift and rapid global change.
This webinar is an invitation to reflect together on what it means to build more robust policies in conditions of uncertainty and the role knowledge brokering models can play in doing so.
This webinar presents the newly published Test and Learn Annex to the Magenta Book, co-authored by Dr Gloria Crabolu during a British Academy Fellowship secondment at the Cabinet Office Evaluation Task Force.
This year, we are looking beyond the UK to explore how policy evaluation is evolving internationally. We’ll bring together leading voices from the US and Europe to compare and contrast how different regions navigate the challenges of evaluating public policy in a complex world.
Following a recent webinar on the Shaping Places for Healthier Lives (SPHL) programme, Hardeep Aiden, Joshua Butt, and Louise Ashwell take a deeper look at the lessons learned from its implementation and the developmental evaluation approach used to track its impact.
Integrated rainwater management (IRM) is an approach to managing rainwater more deliberately, more locally, and more strategically across the complex, interconnected socio-technical system it sits in – from where it lands and across the pathways it subsequently follows.
In this session, Dr Luke Roberts introduces the Temporal Plurality and Energy Activation (TPEA) Framework. This is a radical shift from “Evaluation as Audit” to “Evaluation as Temporal Diagnosis.” We will move beyond linear timelines to explore a Temporal Eco-System, where success depends on syncing the fast “Policy Clock” with the slow “Community Heartbeat.”
Place-based approaches are everywhere. From urban regeneration to health equity, from community development to environmental management, governments and funders worldwide are targeting interventions at specific geographic areas.
Marine planning in England plays a crucial role in shaping how our seas are used, balancing economic development with environmental protection and social needs.
Robust policymaking requires managing epistemic uncertainty, that is, understanding what evidence decisions are built upon, what uncertainties accompany it, and where critical knowledge gaps lie.
Traditional evaluation often relies on rigid timelines that don’t match reality; this blog explores a new framework for navigating the diverse temporal rhythms of schools, hospitals, and communities.
In this webinar, Adam and Nick from the Net Zero Systems Team in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) will share how their team addresses these challenges through their work to embed systems thinking into net zero and carbon budgets policy development and analysis.
The CECAN Conference 2025, held on 30th June 2025, brought together nearly 200 policymakers, evaluators, and academics under the theme “New Government, New Approach to Evaluation?” to explore the future of evaluation in an era of increasing complexity and political change.
You are warmly invited to attend CECAN’s annual conference, ‘New Government, New Approach to Evaluation?’ on Monday 30th June 2025.
The Participatory System Mapper (PRSM) is a free, open-source and secure tool for collaborative system mapping and visualisation.
CECAN Webinar – The benefits and challenges of conducting research with impact ‘built in’: reflections and findings from an evaluation of Electronic Monitoring with the Ministry of Justice
With the CECAN annual conference on the horizon and the process to update the Magenta Book – the Government’s formal guidance on policy evaluation – underway, this blog revisits two questions explored at last year’s CECAN conference Is evaluation a fad? and Is complexity in evaluation just a fad?
The Health Foundation and Local Government Association (LGA) funded and oversaw the Shaping Places for Healthier Lives (England) programme between 2021 and 2024. It was an ambitious and novel approach to funding five local authority led projects to work with partners from their local area to improve health and address health inequalities.
The CECAN 2024 conference ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward: Closing the loop from evaluation to policy making’ considered the questions ‘What is the role of systems thinking in evaluation? Is it the answer to wicked problems?’ in one of its breakout sessions.
Process Tracing is a method used to understand causal chains in single case analysis settings. It is the systematic analysis of contribution claims through explicit investigation of how pieces of evidence support or undermine a particular hypothesis or claim.
This course is an introduction to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is a method for the comparative study of cases and is used to analyse qualitative social data systematically. The analysis compares cases by assigning set memberships across a set of attributes.
This blog summarises key points discussed by delegates in the session “How might the rise of AI tools affect future approaches to evaluation?” as part of the CECAN Conference held at the Royal Academy of Engineering on 4 June 2024.
Brian MacAulay, Principal Economist and Teresa Miquel, Innovation Partner at Digital Catapult will present their approach to measuring outcomes through a complex systems approach.
On 4th June 2024, CECAN hosted it’s 2024 Conference ‘Looking Back and Looking Forward: Closing the loop from evaluation to policy making’ at the prestigious Royal Academy Of Engineering.
CECAN Ltd is delighted to introduce this brand new training opportunity! Building on our popular ‘Handling Complexity in Policy Evaluation’ series, which is designed to provide you with knowledge and practical advice that allows you to deal with complexity in policy analysis and evaluation.
Drawing on the findings of a Policy Fellowship with the Royal Academy of Engineering, Jo Reilly discusses how the application of systems thinking principles might help law enforcement agencies better protect vulnerable people from criminal exploitation.
In this presentation, Nik will provide an overview of SIPHER’s synthetic population, including how it was developed, how it can be used to support decision making as well as strengths and limitations.
CALL FOR PAPER ABSTRACTS. For a special issue on “Advances in causal systems mapping” in the International Journal of Social Research Methodology.
Environmental policy is inherently complex. Outcomes on biodiversity, water quality, air quality, net zero, climate adaptation and food security are interdependent and affected in different ways by many interacting drivers.
This course is an introduction to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is a method for the comparative study of cases and is used to analyse qualitative social data systematically. The analysis compares cases by assigning set memberships across a set of attributes.