Policy evaluation and broad prosperity for governments

Organisations we work with

What you get

• Evidence for policy choices

  An explicit policy theory and monitoring plan, so you can show effectiveness and efficiency, as article 3.1 of the Government Accounts Act and the RPE require

• Accountability to parliament, council and citizens

  Accessible reporting on what policy delivers, for elected representatives and the public

• Value for money

  Insight into outcomes and social costs and benefits to support budget decisions

• Broad prosperity across policy areas

  Shared outcomes and indicators that help departments work towards the same goals

• Learning from elsewhere

  Comparable core indicators, so lessons from other regions and countries can be applied

Why we do what we do

Read the film as text

1. We all want to know
2. our place in the world.
3. Thin grey lines join dots into a web.
4. We like to believe that what we do is part of something larger.
5. It is.
6. Together we make our surroundings, our brands, our communities.
7. We shape the work of others, as they shape ours.
8. The web grows dense.
9. We live in one web of cause and consequence.
10. Each path tells a story, part of a larger narrative.
11. A system of meaning.
12. So what is our impact?
13. Whose lives do we touch?
14. What changed? For whom? How much? And what part was ours?
15. Intended or not, for better or worse.
16. Knowing that changes what you do next.
17. A dark line draws a path through the web. Impact management helps you see it, steer it, and use it.
18. A large word: Lead. A purple path runs through the web. Lead with purpose, and fund your mission.
19. A large word: Improve. A green path runs through the web. Learn what doesn’t work and design for better.
20. A large word: Engage. A blue-green path runs through the web. Share your story, and bring others into it.
21. A large word: Account. A blue path runs through the web. State your claim, and prove it.
22. A large word: Discover. A yellow path runs through the web. Find your next impact before it happens.
23. “How do you measure impact?”
24. It sounds hard.
25. It isn’t.
26. It’s not about the how.
27. It’s about
28. Portraits of people fill the screen.
29. A large word: Who.
30. About rights-holders, whose lives are touched.
31. And stakeholders, whose choices shape them.
32. The people stand side by side, at the same height. A wave of colour runs through the web. Every voice, every perspective, equally weighed.
33. The web turns many colours. Pluriform and equivalent.
34. Who determines what.
35. And what determines how.
36. That’s it. No more, no less.
37. We count what can be counted, and listen to the rest.
38. Coloured paths wind across the web. We find the stories that connect the dots, and make sense of the whole.
39. We love our craft:
40. to ask the questions,
41. to measure what matters,
42. and narrate what works.
43. One dark path remains. Let’s reveal your path.
44. The word narrate, with the line: impact in numbers and stories.

What we often hear

• “Our policy lacks solid evidence of effects. Defending budgets or scaling up becomes hard.”

  We build evaluation into policy from the design stage, with a baseline and clear moments to learn and adjust

• “Parliament, the audit office and the press ask whether our policy works.”

  We help you substantiate your answers with transparent methods and accessible reporting

• “Departments measure different things in different systems. So we end up working past each other.”

  We facilitate shared outcome frameworks, for example based on broad prosperity, that respect each department’s responsibility

• “We want to learn from other regions and countries, but the data isn’t comparable.”

  We help you combine core comparable indicators with local measures, so you can learn without losing nuance

• “The policy review is due, but the policy theory was never written down and the data is patchy.”

  We help you reconstruct the policy theory, make honest use of the data that exists and set up monitoring for the next period

What you may be wondering

• Does this fit our procurement rules?

  We start small and well defined. A second opinion starts at €2,300 excl. VAT, and we agree up front what you get.

• Will we depend on you, even after the elections?

  No. The framework, the indicators and the data are yours. We write everything down so your own team or another firm can carry on.

• Will it hold up when parliament or the audit office asks more?

  We write down which methods we use and what you can and cannot show. So you know in advance which questions you can answer.

To read

• How impact management shapes democracy

  Measuring can make democracy stronger, and quietly hollow it out. On accountability, having a say, who sets the yardstick and what happens when a figure replaces the debate.

• How measuring shapes decisions

  We measure to make better decisions, we say. Yet the decision is often made somewhere else. On how monitoring and evaluation really shape decisions, and what helps.

• The myth of clean data

  If you work on impact, you rarely get a neat dataset. Usually it is a pile of emails with attachments. How we work with that, and why we don’t make it look better than it is.