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Home > NewsRelease > Post-Eval Action Plan Week: Following Up to Drive Change by Janet Mou Pataky and Diana Tindall
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Post-Eval Action Plan Week: Following Up to Drive Change by Janet Mou Pataky and Diana Tindall
From:
American Evaluation Association (AEA) American Evaluation Association (AEA)
For Immediate Release:
Dateline: Washington, DC
Friday, February 15, 2019

 
Hi, we are Janet Mou Pataky, Manager of Accountability & Evaluation and Diana Tindall, Evaluator with the Rick Hansen Institute (RHI). RHI is a Canadian-based not-for-profit organization that drives innovation in spinal cord injury (SCI) research. We evaluate SCI research programs and projects.
Until recently, Diana was an external evaluator. One of the first things she noticed when joining RHI was how they actually knew what was happening as a result of their evaluations. As an external evaluator, she’d conducted debriefing sessions six months after project close – asking clients what they thought had worked best, what they would most liked to have change, and what use had been made of the evaluation.
As a new internal evaluator, she found post-evaluation action plans developed for recent independent evaluations. The plans include several elements for each recommendation. They document management’s response to the recommendation and an explanation if it is rejected or partially accepted. They specify action items for implementation. They assign a lead or person responsible. And they establish key deliverables and expected completion dates.
Previous posts noted how others are following up on action plans. Some communicate on actions through weekly stand up meetings, monthly calls or regular check ins. Others employ technologies like a management action record database or an interactive recommendations implementation website.
We follow up on action plans quarterly or semi-annually. We contact programs and work with them to summarize progress during that time. We document the current status of each recommendation and any changes in the actions initially planned.  We also gather and report evidence on actions completed to date.
These updates go to the CEO, senior management team and applicable funder.  They feed into our overall performance reporting. They contribute to subsequent planning at the funding agreement level – and they are cross-referenced into operating plans at the unit level. All files are located in a “shared” directory so others in the organization can access them.
We also produce a report across evaluations twice a year. This enables us to track management response and implementation status at a more strategic level. It includes examples of changes made and sources of evidence.
Hot Tip: Following up on action plans means…
  • Implementation leads remain aware of the rationale for changes they are making – they’re more likely to stay on track.
  • Change actually happens – what gets “reported on, gets done”.
  • Senior management and funders receive assurance that recommendations are being implemented as planned – and they know the basis for any changes made.
  • Systemic issues can be identified – either because they are the target of repeated recommendations – or because they’re the cause of delays and implementation changes.
Lessons Learned:
Following up on action plans works best when…
  • Updates are reported to those at senior levels.
  • Actions are clear with assigned leads and timelines.
  • There’s flexibility when things don’t happen as planned.
And is most challenging when…
  • Responsibilities and budget don’t easily align to existing assignments.
  • Actions aren’t implemented because programs are already doing something different than the recommendation to address the same issue.
  • Actions are delayed due to (unanticipated) lack of feasibility, changes in context or other factors.
The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Post Evaluation Action Planning Week. All posts this week are contributed by evaluators who came together to write about a simple, but rarely-used tool for encouraging the use of evaluation findings by decision-makers – the action plan. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

About AEA

The American Evaluation Association is an international professional association and the largest in its field. Evaluation involves assessing the strengths and weaknesses of programs, policies, personnel, products and organizations to improve their effectiveness. AEA’s mission is to improve evaluation practices and methods worldwide, to increase evaluation use, promote evaluation as a profession and support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action. For more information about AEA, visit www.eval.org.
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Group: American Evaluation Association
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