Prince Philip House, 3 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5DG
Workshop Overview:
Many policies are ‘complex’, that is, they have multiple objectives and multiple actors with possibly conflicting objectives, feedback loops, and policy outcomes that are dependent on the details of the policy history. Evaluating such policies is correspondingly difficult, because often the impact of the policy is unpredictable and the outcomes may be highly context dependent.
The flexibility in the design needed for complex policy evaluations poses particular problems in relation to public procurement processes, which generally assume that commissioned work can be specified in detail in advance as the basis for an Invitation To Tender (ITT). Not only is writing such an ITT difficult, but also contractors find it difficult to respond when the scope and thus the cost of the work cannot be precisely estimated. These issues can have significant implications for budgets, timescales and contract deliverables, and related risks for contractors and commissioners.
In this workshop, we will:
- Share experience on procuring complexity-appropriate methods, and how to get round some of the rigidities in tender processes
- Pinpoint barriers to complexity appropriate methods in competitive tendering processes
- Develop immediately applicable suggestions and solutions; and have an opportunity to debate these with procurement staff (outside the context of an actual tendering exercise) to suggest mutually workable solutions.
The workshop will bring together policy analysts from government departments who have to commission the evaluation of complex policies and contractors who have experience of bidding against ITTs for policy evaluation.
The workshop will be held on Monday 29th April, 2019 from 10:00 to 16:00 at the Royal Academy of Engineering. It is sponsored and organised by the Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus, https://www.cecan.ac.uk .
Please note, this workshop is a free but places are limited, so registration is required. Places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
How to Join:
Please click here to register via our Eventbrite page.