Standing Committee on Public Accounts

HOUSE OF COMMONS CHAMBRE DES COMMUNES OTTAWA, CANADA K1A 0A6

Comité permanent des comptes publics

For immediate release

Ottawa, September 20, 2010 -

Government departments will need to take significant actions to improve their collection of performance information and evaluation capacity if they are to meet new requirements for effectiveness evaluations, according to a report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts presented to the House of Commons today.

Effectiveness evaluations provide managers with objective, evidence-based assessments of the extent to which government programs are achieving their intended results. As such, effectiveness evaluations are very important for making good, informed decisions about program design and where to allocate resources. Under the Treasury Board’s Policy on Evaluation, large departments must ensure that all direct program spending is evaluated every five years.

In the fall of 2009, the Office of the Auditor General released an audit examining how how evaluation units in six departments identified and responded to various needs for effectiveness evaluation, and whether the departments had developed the required capacity to respond to those needs.

The Public Accounts Committee has long encouraged the development of effectiveness evaluation within the federal government, but the audit findings, such as a lack of performance information, insufficient capacity, and a shortage of experienced evaluators indicate that departments may have difficulty meeting increased requirements for effectiveness evaluation.

In order to help it monitor the progress made by government departments in addressing the weaknesses identified by the audit, the Committee recommended that the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat prepare and make publicly available an annual report on the status of the evaluation function in the federal government