By Danielle Wood, Chair of Productivity Commission and co-head of Evaluation Profession
The Evaluation Profession is one of the newer kids on the APS Professions block, but we’re growing quickly.
When we launched in February 2025, we had 800 members in our evaluation community of practice. Eighteen months later, we’ve been blown away by how quickly that community has grown – increasing more than 10-fold to more than 8,000 members now.
That growth is a testament to the extent and variety of evaluation work going on across government. The most recent State of Evaluation survey counted more than 800 evaluations in progress and 34 in-house evaluation units across departments, helping improve implementation, build knowledge, and enhance accountability and transparency.
As co-head of the Evaluation Profession, with Dr Shane Johnson, it’s exciting to read about the way evaluation is shaping decisions across government.
But we’re ambitious to continue building the profession’s strength. Evaluation capacity is like a muscle: the more we use it, the stronger it grows. Making evaluation the default when proposing a policy change strengthens the evaluation capability across the APS, just as a more visible, highly skilled evaluation profession helps embed that evidence and evaluation culture across government.
Earlier this year, we launched the APS Evaluation Profession Strategy, which outlines our 5 priorities for the profession:
- growing and retaining the evaluation workforce
- developing professional evaluation skills and capabilities
- fostering a professional evaluation workforce
- embedding an evidence and evaluation culture
- driving innovation in evaluation.
We’ve hit the ground running, with 22 events and masterclasses so far, highlighting evaluation career pathways, First Nations approaches to evaluation, and examples of evaluation in action. We also have a thriving community of evaluators sharing tips and resources on our Member Community Platform – and I encourage you to join to connect with colleagues across government.
I’m also looking forward to the event in Canberra and online on 5 November: Evidence in Action: Behavioural Insights, Evaluation and Impact. This is a day-long joint event from the Australian Centre for Evaluation and the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government. We’ll hear from Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh, and Assistant Minister Patrick Gorman, as well as the Secretaries of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Department of the Treasury. And we’ll be joined by keynote speaker Professor Dean Karlan, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance at Northwestern University, and the Founder and former President of Innovations for Poverty Action.
Learn more and register for the event: Evidence in Action: Behavioural Insights, Evaluation and Impact | PM&C
I hope to see you all at the evaluation gym soon.