Policy evaluation is about assessing the value of policies, but too little attention, it seems to me, is paid to the meaning of “value” in all this. The English word “value”, of course, has multiple meanings that include numerical (e.g. “a parameter value”), economic (e.g. “good value”) and ethical (e.g. “a value judgment”).
CECAN was represented at the recent Social Innovation Conference in Lisbon, by Professor Liz Varga of Cranfield University.
The aim of the case study was to explore, via CECAN’s approach to participatory systems mapping, the energy trilemma policy landscape. Specifically, it was to map relevant policies, their interaction, context, and impact on the trilemma, and to highlight: the impacts of policies on the three ‘legs’ of the trilemma; potential common and/or contradictory aims and mechanisms amongst policies; and uncertainty and evidence gaps.
On the 23rd and 24th November 2017 members of the CECAN team, Pete Barbrook-Johnson, Clare Twigger-Ross and myself attended the EEEN conference in the beautiful surroundings of the Royal Society in Edinburgh. Facilitated by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), civil servants from environment agencies, consultants, practitioners and academics came together to share experiences and ideas for the future of environmental policy evaluation.
This presentation continues the CECAN series on realist research and evaluation and their use in relation to complexity. It focuses on the issue of causation.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations in 2015 puts follow-up and review processes at the heart of global and national efforts to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The University of Surrey has been awarded a three year RCUK Innovation Fellowship by ESRC.
This month CECAN proudly hosted an International Symposium on complexity approaches to evaluate global nexus policy challenges, at Barnett Hill Hotel in Surrey.
As we all know CECAN is pioneering, testing and promoting innovative policy evaluation approaches and methods across Nexus domains through a series of “real-life” case study projects – it’s about measuring best value in complex, inter-connecting systems.
I first heard of Qualitative Comparative Analysis from Prof David Byrne at an early CECAN meeting and it seemed to address key issues we faced when evaluating 13 very different interventions across England designed to improve community resilience to flooding.
As the first step in developing my CECAN research project titled ‘The Visual Representation of Complex Systems: A Typology of Visual Codes for Systemic Relations’ I was thrilled to have the opportunity to engage with the Relating Systems Thinking and Design community last month.
We were delighted to run a successful policy evaluation workshop last week with policy teams and analysts working on energy security and the wider energy ‘trilemma’ (decarbonisation, prices, and security), at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
New methodological perspectives, from economics and other disciplines, and research into practice are suggesting more effective approaches to regulation that could also avoid escalatory pressures towards red tape.
The complexity of sustainability is immense, yet many policies and plans now have sustainability as an aim. While it is difficult to empirically evaluate sustainability outcomes, it is possible to evaluate the process of decision-making to identify if decision-making is becoming more informed and working towards balancing social, economic and environmental priorities.
September saw a successful collaboration between CECAN and Brighton University, who hosted a Dynamic Pattern Synthesis (DPS) summer school.
We’d like to extend our thanks to Professor Saville Kushner who gave an excellent talk on behalf of CECAN at the Food Standards Agency on 9th October.
Contact: Frances Rowe and Adam Hejnowicz DEFRA and the Rural Development Programme for England: Evaluating complex policy at a time of dynamic change. From 2016 to 2018 DEFRA worked with the CECAN case study team, led by Newcastle and York universities, to help inform...
Contact: Amy Proctor, Newcastle University CECAN Case Study: Enforcement on Waste Crime - Environment Agency Between 2016 and 2018, the CECAN case study team, led by Newcastle University, worked with the Environment Agency to develop a new approach to their evaluation...
Contact: Pete Barbrook Johnson CECAN Contracts for Difference Case Study – BEIS CECAN team members provided expert input in the evaluation work conducted by BEIS and contractors on the Contracts for Difference policy. Completed in 2018, CECAN supported as a ‘critical...
Contact: Amy Proctor, Newcastle University CECAN Bovine TB Case Study – DEFRA Defra are currently developing an evaluation framework to guide their evaluation of the overall Bovine TB Strategy. CECAN have been operating as a ‘critical friend’ in this process, with...
We’d like to extend our thanks to Professor David Hunter who gave an excellent talk at BEIS on 12th September.
It’s been a month since we launched ‘A Whole New World: Funding and Commissioning in Complexity’ and the response has been incredible. Over 120 people came to the two launch events, and more than 1000 people read the report online in the first week. We’ve also started to have some excellent conversations about how to take this work forward.
It would be naive and, potentially, ill-advised to have evaluation solely drive policy direction. Good, open, evidence-backed policy, however, does need to be informed by evaluation results and insights. My CECAN Fellowship provided me with a rare opportunity to investigate how evaluation is applied in real life within a government department – in this case Defra – and how it can be used to plan for future policymaking.
Defra are currently developing an evaluation framework to guide their evaluation of the overall Bovine TB Strategy.
CECAN team members have been providing expert input in the current evaluation work being conducted by BEIS and contractors on the Contracts for Difference policy.
CECAN team members have been providing expert advice and guidance to members of the Environment Agency’s Evidence, Assessment and Evaluation team
On 19th July CECAN held the first of two joint and linked workshops with DEFRA.
CECAN PhD Researcher, Anna Kaxira, from the Policy Studies Institute at the University of Westminster, recently attend the CIED Summer School.
CECAN partner Professor Liz Varga of Cranfield University, recently attended the M2D 2017 Annual Conference on Decision Making Under Uncertainty.
We are pleased to introduce a new member of the CECAN team. Joanna Boehnert joins us as a CECAN Fellow.