We are sharing the independent evaluation of our 2019 Australia-New Zealand learning programme. This was carried out by PaperGiant and can be viewed in full on Medium.
You can find it here: States of Change: The journey of learning through innovative action.
The importance of working in the open
Lots of evaluations are hidden behind the scenes, away from public scrutiny, help and support. We didn’t want that and subscribe to the GDS mantra, that if you make things open: it makes things better.
We hope that by releasing the report in full you can see what we achieved in the programme and what we did not. This could be useful if you are:
- Interested in being on one of our programmes.
- Designing similar interventions.
- Embedding innovation in large organisations.
- Curious in the evaluation approach itself.
We hope that by releasing this report on Medium - rather than as a PDF - that it is easier for you to comment on, ask questions and feedback. We strongly encourage this!
What the learning programme was
In October this year, eight teams from across Australia and New Zealand completed our 2019 learning programme. It ran for just over 6-months and teams experienced new ways of approaching their project and policy challenges. This ranged from exploring issues from new perspectives, prioritising first-hand user research, building psychological safety in teams and recognising and uncovering the power of hidden cultural barriers. These were all applied on live projects that our teams were working on.
Who put this evaluation together
PaperGiant are a strategic design and research consultancy. We chose to work with them because they quickly grasped the intent of the programme and its purpose. They have worked in the public sector previously and understood the complexity space we were working in.
They created a multidisciplinary team - a lead evaluator, design researcher and communications expert - for the project.