How does the Ministry know if it is achieving the outcomes?

• High-level outcome monitoring
• Selective evaluative studies to assess the Ministry's interventions
• Output reporting
• Capability measures

This section outlines our progress and plans on our monitoring and evaluative work which will assist us to learn whether the outcomes and intermediate outcomes are being achieved, whether our interventions are working and how we can continue to improve our effectiveness.

The Ministry measures and assesses the performance of itself and others at several levels. These are illustrated below.

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High-level outcome monitoring

The Ministry monitors the indicators of progress for the high-level outcomes of the Action Plan. Progress will continue to be made over the next year to put in place indicators for the intermediate outcomes.

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Selective evaluative studies to assess the Ministry's interventions

Because of the attribution challenges noted earlier in this Statement of Intent, it is more appropriate to use selective evaluation studies to continually learn about and improve the impact and effectiveness of interventions and policy advice by the Ministry. One of the evaluative studies indicated in last year's Statement of Intent (the quality of policy advice) has been completed and another two are in progress.

The work in this last year will be completed and expanded:

• in 2004, an independent assessment was commissioned of the policy work that can be to some extent benchmarked against the rest of the public sector, and this will be repeated each year
• throughout 2004-05, Ministerial satisfaction was regularly tracked, which will continue to be done every quarter
• in early 2005, an independent assessment was undertaken of the views of a small sample of the Ministry's stakeholders in relation to its reputation and influence - this will be built on with a full evaluative study of the impact of the Ministry's influence
• the effectiveness of the prioritisation and intervention selection processes, answering the question as to whether resources are allocated to the most important areas has not yet been assessed, and how to do this will be explored during 2005/06.

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Output reporting

The Ministry will continue to report to the Minister of Women's Affairs quarterly on the achievements against the agreed work programme.

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Capability measures

In this past year capability has been assessed by:

• post-appointment interviews and exit interviews focused on climate, leadership and management, processes, and systems
• reviewing IT infrastructure and implementing two major improvement projects
• reviewing the performance management system
• reviewing corporate support services, and restructuring the management team and the corporate support units
• undertaking an internal climate survey, which showed the Ministry to have achieved a substantial improvement in its internal climate
• assessing and revising the relationship management strategy.

Capability will continue to be assessed and enhanced by means of:

• continued rigorous use of post-appointment and exit interviews with regular tracking of a range of human resources indicators such as turnover
• running an annual internal climate survey to assess climate, leadership and management, and relationships
• building on training of managers in performance management
• commissioning a regular survey of stakeholders
• an annual review of our policy capability
• systematic reviews of internal policies, strategies and processes to align all processes with our outcomes.

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