ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the role of evaluative information in the work of the main Australian Parliamentary Committee created to oversee the Government's responses to the pandemic. It briefly reviews the nature of the evidence before the committee or available to it through the work of the Auditor-General and the evaluation community. The analysis indicates that evaluative information is playing a role in the deliberations of the committee although it is not recognisable in terms of formal method or assessment of the quality of the information. The Committee's inquiry receives information through multiple pathways including submissions and hearings and judgment is applied about what and how the information is reported and how it is used to support findings and recommendations. The Auditor-General provides evaluative information to the Parliament which is available for the committee's use and there is potential for the evaluation community to expand its contribution. The Committee has encountered difficulties accessing information, this creating particular opportunities for the evaluation community to fill some of the gaps. However, the special challenges that pandemic-related evaluations face need to be recognised and may go some way to explaining why the evaluation community has not been more visible in this context to date.
