Australian Centre for Evaluation

High-quality evaluation is essential for generating actionable evidence to inform government policies and decisions, as well as promote a culture of learning, innovation, and continuous improvement.  To support this, the Australian Centre for Evaluation was established in The Treasury in July 2023. 

The Centre’s mission is to help put evaluation evidence at the heart of policy design and decision-making. It achieves this by:

  • improving the volume, quality and use of evaluation evidence
  • embedding a culture of evaluation across the Australian Government.
     
Shantanu Sheshgir from the Australian Centre for Evaluation addressing a group of attendees an impact evaluation workshop.

Impact evaluation workshop on 17 June 2024, facilitated by Shantanu Sheshgir from ACE.

Image: Australian Centre for Evaluation

The Centre offers a range of services to Commonwealth entities.

It provides guidance and support to embed the Commonwealth Evaluation Policy, including through resources on the Commonwealth Evaluation Toolkit. During 2023–24, the Centre worked with the Commonwealth Evaluation Reference Group on several priorities. This included strengthening evaluation planning and use in the budget process and developing an Evaluation Maturity Model to help agencies strengthen evaluation capability.

The Centre provides technical advice and support for the design and delivery of impact evaluations using randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental methods. Over 2023–24, the Centre has developed impact evaluation partnerships with Employment and Workplace Relations, Health and Aged Care, Education, and Social Services.

Evaluation training resources and targeted evaluation training are delivered by the Centre. A key project is the development of online training modules to be delivered through APSLearn. This includes an Introduction to Evaluation course funded by the Australian Public Service Capability Reinvestment Fund Round 1.

The Centre also supports professional networking and community of practice events that promote comprehensive evaluation and knowledge sharing.

Building APS evaluation capability helps reduce over-reliance on consultants and contractors. Data from AusTender suggests that the Australian Government spends over $50 million a year on evaluation reports from the private sector.

Find out more

Australian Government (n.d.) Australian Centre for Evaluation, The Treasury website, accessed 19 July 2024.

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