Policy Logic: Creating policy and evaluation capital in your organisation

Cultural barriers can impede evaluative discourse in government agencies and can pose challenges to good public policy and program implementation. These barriers can be raised—and ameliorated—by applying the “Policy Logic” framework. Policy Logic incorporates elements of the standard “Program Logic” approach, but it goes more deeply into government’s purpose, focusing on the government policy problem to be addressed by the proposed policy or program. The manner in which the framework is used in workshops and discussions with evaluation clients is critical to its success as an evaluation tool. Since its initial development in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in 2001, Policy Logic has become increasingly popular as an analytic tool in policy development and program evaluation. The lively, interactive nature of Policy Logic workshops also makes them useful in bridging the divide between policy and program expertise, helping build a confident, speculative conversation in organisations about “what’s needed” and “what works” and improving the way the purpose of policy and programs is communicated to government and to stakeholders. This can deepen the role of evaluation as integral to policy development and program management, rather than as a “bolt on” or an “afterthought” in the policy-implementation process. This article is based on a café-style interactive workshop at the 2017 Australasian Evaluation Society Conference in Canberra, Australia. The workshop was aimed at stimulating discussion and debate about how evaluation practice—assisted by the Policy Logic tool—can help bridge the policy-implementation divide.