Les Éclaireurs #1 : l’évaluation engagée

*La 27e Région conducts its action research programmes under a partnership agreement between the association and various public partners. The agreement secures funding for the programmes without the “client / provider” relationship that often governs interactions between public initiatives and social innovators. Under this form of partnership, La 27e Région has now completed 18 residencies at various public facilities, with public institutions at all levels (regions, ministries, etc.).

Les Éclaireurs is a collaborative future-planning programme developed by La 27e Région to imagine the future of public administration, and test at least one of the concepts that emerges from the exercise in a real-life situation. 

Les Éclaireurs #1 focused on “engaged evaluation” and brought together participants from different backgrounds. The idea that emerged involved a new evaluation process for public policies, which aims to be more engaging, if not more engaged. The goal of the new evaluation process is to build trust and support and arouse curiosity, rather than leading to distrust or judgment, while fostering a cross-functional approach in public-sector working methods. It is also designed to develop the tools required to implement recommendations and prevent the work of the evaluators from going unheeded. The next step is to trial a system for producing video clips, an original, compelling means of summarising certain aspects of the evaluators’ work both during evaluations and the feedback phases. The chosen technique involves writing a short script and then adding small coloured inserts with key words and images to appear at certain intervals. The evaluator speaks his or her lines aloud while filming the small annotated inserts, which he or she places in front of the camera in sequence.