Scottish Government Evaluation Action Plan

Executive Summary

• Evaluation is essential to the work of the Scottish Government (SG) and allows us to assess whether policies and interventions are being delivered as intended, and to help identify ways to improve them.
• The SG already has a strong track record in carrying out evaluations with many of our analysts skilled to design, conduct and manage evaluations. This document sets out how we will continue to develop our approach.
• Central to this Action Plan is our vision for evaluation which sets out what we intend to achieve over the next few years:
  • 1. SG policies and programmes (including spending and taxation) to be routinely evaluated (the suitability for evaluation and how we approach it are outlined in the principles below).
  • 2. all applicable SG staff to be skilled to manage, conduct and / or utilise outputs from evaluations; and that
  • 3. evidence from evaluation is used more effectively to improve outcomes for the people of Scotland.
• To deliver the vision we will continue to nurture a strong culture of evaluation within the SG through the expansion of evaluation training for all relevant staff, establishing a network of evaluation champions, and exploring options for establishing an SG Centre of Expertise on Appraisal and Evaluation.
• Through an evaluation peer review network, and a new Evaluation Plan template, we will ensure that all SG evaluations are designed robustly and outputs are of a high quality. We will monitor this through periodic auditing of evaluation plans for quality and coherence. We will ensure that Theory of Change / Logic Models are completed for every new policy or interventions. In addition we will develop new processes to ensure that all SG spending review / budget decision making exercises are informed by appropriate consideration of evaluation evidence, and robust evaluation plans.
• To inform the development of similar projects in the future we will take forward actions to ensure the data collected by the evaluations and outputs are fully utilised. In project Evaluation Plans full consideration will need to be shown to the types of outputs to be produced. As part of the periodic auditing of Evaluation Plans we will assess the outputs and examine how the evidence has been utilised and where appropriate make recommendations for improvement.
• To encourage openness and transparency we will publish findings from all our evaluations and, where possible, data collected on behalf of the evaluation will be made available. We will launch a Scottish Government Evaluation web page, which will include links to recently published evaluations, links to our guidance, and forthcoming SG evaluations. Information on all upcoming, on-going, and recently published evaluations will be made available on the Cabinet Office’s Evaluation Registry. We will use innovative approaches to disseminate findings in accessible formats such as producing plain English summary documents.
• To track our progress in achieving the vision and the associated actions we will be publishing an annual progress update on this action plan.