Reviewing Defra’s Complexity Evaluation Framework

Steer Economic Development worked with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to evaluate and iterate the Department’s published guidance on its use of complexity theory in evaluation.

Spanning five months, Steer Economic Development’s work involved:

• A review of the Department’s existing published guidance on complexity-appropriate evaluation;
• An evaluation of the guidance in use by Defra and its agencies, collected through observations of policy evaluation advisory sessions and in-depth interviews with officials; and
• The development of a set of case studies, demonstrating how analysts and policymakers had used the guidance to develop complexity-appropriate evaluations.

As a final output, Steer Economic Development produced a published evaluation report and a revised and updated version of the guidance on complexity appropriate evaluation in Defra.