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About Evaluation Support
The National Center for Environmental Innovation's (NCEI) Evaluation Support Division (ESD) evaluates select innovative programs and projects and enables its partners in core programs to more effectively conduct program evaluations and analyses that inform management decisions, enhance organizational learning, promote innovations, and foster environmental results.
While the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) has served as a driver for the Agency to refocus on the need for formal program evaluation as it implements GPRA, program evaluation should be viewed in a broader context than GPRA alone. In addition to its use in evaluating ongoing innovation efforts in the Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, program evaluation can be a valuable tool and should be considered as an integral component of the Agency's results-based management framework.
Program evaluation is a valuable tool in planning, developing, evaluating, and reporting on environmental projects and programs. ESD seeks to fulfill it's mission of analyzing innovations, fostering an evaluation culture and building evaluation capacity throughout the Agency by:
- Documenting and sharing
the results of Innovation Analyses.
- Co-sponsoring with OCFO,
the Program Evaluation Network, a forum that allows
Agency staff to establish collaborative relationships and to discuss
evaluation concepts and strategies.
- Developing evaluation Tools
and Products including, among other things, program evaluation fact
sheets that document the approach, results and outcome of selected evaluations
throughout the Agency;' evaluation modules that serve as a practitioner's
tool to facilitate the process of capturing, identifying and examining
the broader potential of innovative tools and approaches; and an evaluation
worksheet that provides basic guidelines for planning an evaluation.
- Maintaining ESD's Website,
a gateway to evaluation products, tools, resources, Reports
and other information related to program evaluation.
- Encouraging the development
of professional evaluation skills by sharing information on Evaluation
Training opportunities.
- Providing limited consultation, advice, training and technical assistance to help programs evaluate innovative and core activities and advice and assistance in acquiring contract vehicles for evaluation.
Outside of evaluating and supporting innovations coming out of OPEI, ESD conducts only limited program evaluations in cooperation with program and regional offices. ESD functions primarily in a consultative role to support and promote capacity building within EPA, providing offices throughout the Agency with the requisite tools for conducting assessments of their own programs.