INLOGOV Professor joins Olympic Legacy Project Evaluation Team
Professor Tony Bovaird of INLOGOV has joined the research team of Grant Thornton and ECOTEC Research and Consulting (now Ecorys), which has been commissioned by the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to conduct a three-year Meta-Evaluation of the Impacts and Legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.
The study will be the single largest and most comprehensive evaluation exercise commissioned in connection with London 2012 Olympics.
The project will involve the synthesis of results, findings and the outputs across a set of existing and planned evaluations with heterogeneous features, into a single overall evaluation. It will also involve reviewing the methodology of the project level evaluations to assess whether they meet the standard principles set out in the '2012 Games Impacts and Legacy Evaluation Framework'.
The Meta-Evaluation therefore holds significant potential to advance methods for meta-evaluation more widely, particularly in terms of demonstrating how meta-evaluation can be employed practically in government. This part of the work, on which Tony Bovaird will act as overall advisor, is being funded by ESRC.
It is intended to develop a framework for identifying, mining and aggregating data within a disparate body of existing evaluations, to inform better policy making and improve value for money and to create a platform for more robust evaluation and research practice (in the field of mega events) in the future.