Date and time: Tuesday 21 July, 12.30pm - 1.30pm AEST
Topic: Do current models of commissioning evaluation support good evaluation practice and meet their intent?
Location: online, via Zoom. Details will be emailed to registrants just prior to the start time
Presenters: AES Fellows: Alan Woodward, John Guenther, Lyn Alderman, Marion Norton
Register online by: 20 July 2026

Event description:

This session is seeking your experiences of Evaluation Commissioning – helpful and unhelpful -  to enable evaluations which make a difference. We will prompt your input with voices of workshop participants at the 2025 AES Conference.

Why is this important?

The Evaluation Commissioning process involves a wide range of people including:

• those tendering who win and lose
• the program and policy areas which seek to find ways to improve the program
• evaluators
• those who participate in and/or are affected by the outcome of the evaluation.

See the AES BLOG for more detail:  Who does a commissioned evaluation involve and what matters to them?  based on contributions from 80 attendees.

Our questions for this session are:

Commissioning Outcomes: What commissioning processes facilitate good evaluation practices?

How to improve:  What would it take to shift systems and culture to facilitate good evaluation outcomes?

The choices made in the procurement design directly impact factors such as who can undertake the evaluation, what is valued in assessing the tenders, who can contribute, what aspects of the program matter and what counts as evidence of ‘it works’. The specifications may affect whether the evaluation can or will meet rigorous requirements of human research (National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research 2025 ) as well as a range of protocols and principles including:

• AES Guidelines for the Ethical Conduct of Evaluations

• Australian Institute of Indigenous Studies (IATSIS) Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research (2020)

• Ethical protocol for Evaluation practice in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander settings

• First Nations Cultural Safety Framework (AES) 

• Right way evaluation: Our First Nations’ approach to monitoring evaluation and learning.

This seminar will be recorded and available on the member portal only.

Presenter details:

The four AES Fellows leading this seminar have long careers of evaluation in government, NGOs and private settings. with roles as commissioners, evaluators, service practitioners, organisational heads. policy advisers, planners and program designers. Their role in this seminar is to stimulate your awareness of the potential for a commissioning process to promote quality evaluation practices and to encourage you to provide your experiences in order for the AES to determine whether commissioning poses systemic barriers to providing quality evaluations that makes a difference.  

This event is organised & hosted by the AES Fellows Management Committee. Our seminar series provides an opportunity for you to meet with AES members and others in the evaluation community and to share and learn from the experiences of fellow evaluators.

Seminar start times:

VIC, ACT, NSW, TAS, QLD: 12.30pm

SA, NT: 12.00pm

WA: 9.30am

New Zealand: 2.30pm

For other time zones please go to https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Please ensure you have access to your email address just prior to the start time to access Zoom details. Please also check your email address is correct on your registration form before submitting. Thanks.