Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 15
15
Accepted
The Ministry admitted that its evaluation in the transformation programme was not as strong as...
Conclusion
The Ministry admitted that its evaluation in the transformation programme was not as strong as it should have been and recognised that it needed to put more effort into evaluation going forward. It told us that it was extending its team of analysts in its expansion programme, from three to 17.26 The Ministry told us that while there was evidence which suggested that tagging changes offenders’ behaviour while offenders were wearing tags, insights into longer-term impacts after tags are removed were limited. It committed to rigorously evaluate its current and future programmes and the extent to which tagging impacts on longer-term outcomes, including reducing reoffending, which it described as the “holy grail” of insight.27 The Ministry told us it looked forward to collecting robust and world-leading evidence, but that it did not underestimate the challenge ahead. It explained that it would need to rely on higher numbers of tagged offenders to produce robust analyses, while it still needs to better understand differences in outcomes between tagged offenders and control groups.28
Government Response Summary
The government agrees to improve its evaluation of electronic monitoring programs, including rigorous evaluation of long-term impacts on reoffending, and outlines specific actions like improved data collection, a benefits management strategy, and a formal evaluation strategy.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: August 2023 4.2 EM data analysts now receive monthly data from EM service providers. This informs a comprehensive internal reporting suite and supports quarterly external publications. A data improvement plan has been developed and a data dictionary produced to map the data structure from existing providers to the improved Future Service design. The department’s data scientists now have access to a detailed cut of provider data which has been cleansed and matched with core probation data. This enables the agency to develop more detailed analytics about the impact of EM. 4.3 By April 2023, a benefits management strategy and realisation plan will be in place to manage the identification, realisation, tracking and ownership of EM benefits. Benefit owners will be held accountable for realising assigned benefits; this will be tracked through the agency’s benefits management processes and governance. 4.4 The Ministry of Justice is developing a formal, outward-looking evaluation strategy for EM. This outlines how the department, and the agency will use evaluation to develop a strong evidence base for future decision making, built around the needs of stakeholders. To fully understand each programme’s implementation, a range of evaluation methods will be used including process, impact and economic evaluations. Each evaluation programme will be underpinned by a logic model that describes key project outcomes, outputs, activities and inputs. This will ensure evaluations are useful, credible, proportionate and robust.