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Nathan Sibley (Department of the Environment)

The ability to report on natural resource assets, collect data from disparate activities, monitor change at landscape scale to inform the Australian Government  on how to best target future investments is a major challenge.   Evaluations on programme achievement have been constrained to best estimates and relied on case study analysis. The introduction of a Natural Resource Management online reporting tool has provided natural resource managers with access to a national reporting hub. It has evolved into a fully searchable online reporting interface and provides the ability to report on the state of natural resource assets, collect data from disparate activities and over time will contribute to our ability to monitor change at a landscape scale. By making the data public through our online reporting tool, new and strengthened partnerships with the science community and broader NRM community have been forged that has resulted in independent evaluation of our programme investments. To date one peer review evaluation has been published and a number of other papers are currently in review. This paper documents our experience in moving from paper reporting to an evaluation and reporting tool and the benefits that brings to target and direct the Department of Environment's future investments in Natural Resource Management.