Submission to the Productivity Commission: In relation to the proposed Indigenous Evaluation Strategy

Abstract

The authors of this submission are all academics, research scholars or visiting fellows at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) at the Australian National University. Since 1990, CAEPR has established a strong reputation and track record in Indigenous policy research, creating and maintaining long-term partnerships with governments, First Nations communities and organisations involved in research and policy development. CAEPR is a highly specialised and experienced research centre that maintains a deep expertise in Indigenous policy research, bringing together First Nations and non-Indigenous academics from a range of disciplines including economics, anthropology, education, public policy, sociology and human geography to work on issues related to Indigenous public policy. Among many other projects, CAEPR is currently undertaking a three-year evaluation of the NSW Government’s Local Decision Making initiative, an independent evaluation project that is co-designed with First Nations peoples and organisations in New South Wales. We appreciate the opportunity to provide this submission to the Productivity Commission. We note that the Commission proposes to release a Draft Report in February 2020, and we will endeavour to provide detailed comments once the Draft Report is released. As with all CAEPR publications, the views expressed in this submission are those of the authors and do not reflect any official CAEPR position. In the meantime, we wish to point to a small number of key issues that in our view need to be addressed in the proposed Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (IES). We address each of these key issues separately below. Show more