Strategic commercial interventions: evaluation guidance

3. Evaluation plan

As part of the business case undertaken prior to the intervention, a monitoring and evaluation plan should be developed to outline how monitoring and evaluation will be undertaken following implementation. It is expected that the monitoring and evaluation plan would consider the following:

• plans for regular monitoring and reporting on the financial cost and value of the investment including monitoring the changing nature of the financial risk to which taxpayers are exposed;
• plans for monitoring set key performance indicators based on the intervention’s SMART objectives to understand if the investment is working as planned. This should include collecting data prior to the intervention to establish a ‘baseline’ from which the impact of the intervention can be assessed;
• plans for outcome evaluation (to understand the outcomes and impacts of the investment and if it has met its objectives) and process evaluation (to understand how well the intervention was designed and delivered);
• resources for undertaking monitoring and evaluation and who will be responsible; and
• how the findings of the evaluation will be disseminated to allow lessons learned to be shared with and accessible to Officials and Ministers faced with make decisions on similar interventions in the future.