11th September 2019
CECAN Fellow, Jayne Cox, has published a project report from her funded fellowship project entitled “How does the commissioning process inhibit the uptake of complexity-appropriate evaluation?”. The report is available to download here.
The study identified barriers to adopting complexity-appropriate methods that arise from the competitive tendering process used to commission policy evaluations. Interviewees thought the process deals especially poorly with two of the intrinsic features of complexity-appropriate approaches – the need for flexibility and iteration to respond to emergence, and the value of collaborative working and co-creation. The report offers a range of solutions, from small tweaks of existing tendering processes to a radical overhaul of evaluation commissioning.
Slides from an earlier workshop presentation can also be found here.