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Evaluation and Performance Audit

RAND Europe's expertise in the practice of evaluation and performance audit is aimed at helping decision and policy makers improve the analysis underlying their choices. In short, we support informed judgements and help to improve decision making.

Our team of experts work across a range of topical disciplines and use mixed methods of enquiry involving both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Our work in the area of evaluation and performance audit involves a continuum of perspectives ranging from ex ante and ex post evaluations to those anticipating what might happen. In conditions of greater uncertainty, we apply our expertise in scenario thinking. Often the evidence collected holds others to account by focussing on key issues such as the value for money of public spending: what was spent: in what ways and with what immediate outputs; what is the overall value to society; and how could it have been done better or differently?

We work closely with our clients including the European Commission and a number of European Supreme Audit Institutions. In the UK we are in strategic partnerships with key deliverers of services that matter to the public and we work with corporate, third sector and social enterprises. Our work can be organised into three broad areas of expertise which include value for money (VFM) studies, impact assessment, and informing strategic thinking.

More »Current Projects

Informing New Social Policy In a Responsive Europe (INSPIRE) — 06 March 2009

This is a long-term, multi-disciplinary research project commissioned by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities (DG EMPL). It aims to provide an information base to assist the Commission and Member States make better-informed decisions on the development and implementation of employment and social policies.

More »Completed Research

Assessing Impacts and Outcomes of Regulatory Services — 30 October 2009

Local Authority Regulatory Services are under increasing pressures to demonstrate how they contribute to safe, sustainable and cohesive local communities. RAND Europe now provides a new step by step guide on how to assess the impacts and outcomes of LARS operations, and how to display the resulting information. The toolkit is based on RAND Europe research analysing the current use of such data by local authorities in England and Wales. Both the toolkit and the final research report have now been published by the Local Better Regulation Office (LBRO) which commissioned this research.

Full Document (www.lbro.org.uk)

Evaluating Grant Peer Review in the Health Sciences: A Review of the Literature — 31 August 2009

More than 95 percent of the £2 billion of public funding for medical research each year in the UK is allocated by peer review. Long viewed as a respected process of quality assurance for research, grant peer review has lately been criticised by a growing number of people as inefficient and structuraly flawed. This report presents the findings of a wide-ranging literature review to evaluate these criticisms and a short discussion of simple modifications that might help to address some of them.

Full Document