What difference will informing and engaging stakeholders make and how will this be evaluated?

Evaluation is an integral part of stakeholder involvement. Planning the evaluation in advance is important to ensure that the necessary data are collected and that the evaluations are able to inform decisions about any necessary adjustments to the approaches used.

Measurable success criteria that reflect the objectives of informing and engaging stakeholders should be developed. The evaluation should address whether:

• The intended outputs were delivered and appropriate
• The intended outcomes were achieved
• The level of involvement was appropriate
• The approaches that were used were appropriate and worked as expected
• The stakeholders were informed and engaged to an appropriate extent
• The input was appropriate and whether it was used appropriately
• The efforts were worthwhile relative to what was achieved

The evaluation should include a basic description of what was done, including the objectives, how stakeholders were targeted, and the approaches used to do this.

Collecting feedback from a range of stakeholders is likely to be important since their assessment of the efforts and the extent to which they succeeded may vary.

The evaluation can also help with risk management by raising awareness of the challenges and issues related to monitoring.

To further develop our understanding of how best to inform and engage stakeholders in the preparation and use of policy briefs, it is important that the evaluations are undertaken and shared. These should include an assessment of the lessons learned, examples of successes, and an understanding of things that may have gone wrong. As part of this learning process, obtaining feedback about this guide is also important and we encourage you to send us your thoughts based on your own experiences, so that we can improve it for future use.

This page was last updated November 2011.