(Chapter 1—Status Report on Evaluating the Effectiveness of Programs—Spring 2013 Report of the Auditor General)
Ottawa, 30 April 2013—The government has made satisfactory progress on evaluating the effectiveness of its programs, but the contribution of evaluation to government decisions is still limited by weaknesses, says the Auditor General of Canada, Michael Ferguson, in a Status Report tabled today in Parliament. Status reports look at whether the government has made satisfactory progress in acting on issues raised in past audits.
“We have examined the federal government’s evaluation function many times since the 1970s,” said Mr. Ferguson. “While these audits have shown improvement over time, a number of challenges remain.”
This audit found that the government has made satisfactory progress in implementing recommendations from the Auditor General’s 2009 audit. All three departments covered by this audit—Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada—have maintained or increased their capacity to evaluate their programs over the last four years. They have put in place strategies to measure ongoing performance and are collecting some performance information for most programs. The Treasury Board Secretariat has provided some related guidance and support to departments, although gaps remain in how it monitors whether departments are meeting obligations to evaluate all the programs that are required to be.
The audit also found that weaknesses continue to limit the contribution of program evaluation to decision making in the government. For instance, departments noted that the limited availability of ongoing performance information hampered 14 of the 20 evaluations completed in 2011–12. While an important use of evaluations is to support departments’ submissions to Treasury Board, a review of a random sample of 32 such submissions showed that 22 did not present findings from program evaluation. The audit also found that two of the three departments have not evaluated all their ongoing grant and contribution programs as required by the Financial Administration Act. As a result, decisions have been made about programs and related expenditures with incomplete information on their effectiveness.
“Evaluation is a tool to improve programs and support government policy and spending decisions through evidence-based information,” said Mr. Ferguson. “Despite this progress, program evaluation is still not used to its full potential to support government decision making.”
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