'Wanting to make things better is something that drives me and I am very fortunate to be surrounded by a fantastic team of colleagues at OPM who share my passion. To me, evaluations are never about declaring whether or not something has worked after the event. Millions of pounds of taxpayers' money and unimaginable efforts by frontline staff, in particular, have been poured into various forms of interventions. Evaluation, to me, is always about enhancing the chances of success by working with people to generate and use evidence on an ongoing basis to improve.
I have been very fortunate in having had the opportunity to work with so many different groups of people involved in such diverse aspects of public services, and I know that there is so much commitment and passion out there to improving lives. Evaluations are most powerful when all that passion can be harnessed and galvanized into clear vision and action.
This is really important, especially for segments of society who are vulnerable or marginalized. Equality is not simply about equal treatment or equal opportunity. It is about equality of outcomes. Meaningful ways of conducting evaluations can really help focus our attention of the achievement of better outcomes for everyone, and to engage people in such a way that they are involved in decisions and actions to improve their lives.'