ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted “business as usual” for evaluators and evaluation. It also presents an opportunity for improving and recalibrating evaluation practices in response to pressures to demonstrate value, respond to the more immediate needs in the system, and use insights from the crisis to strengthen evaluation practice. Using examples from the Canadian federal government, we examine three innovations. First, the Public Health Agency of Canada examined its immediate operational demands and established structures and processes to improve responses. Second, we analyze the potential for taking greater advantage of the potential synergies from co-location of evaluation and audit through exchange and collaborative work. Third, evaluation units can act proactively to define what success looks like in the near, medium, and longer term, operationally defining and then assessing key performance measures to help identify implementation issues that need to be addressed. This can be illustrated through the identification of leading and lagging indicators. Evaluation's potentially dynamic function in a crisis proactively assists senior managers as they tackle urgent and difficult problems. The disruption of the COVID pandemic presents an opportunity to improve and recalibrate evaluation practices so as to directly assist management in real time.
