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Zita Unger (Ziman), Anthea Rutter (The Centre for Program Evaluation)

Stakeholder analysis is a vital component of best practice evaluation.  Although most evaluators undertake a "front-end" process of some kind the methodology described here allows for a more strategic approach.

The benefits of a thorough stakeholder analysis, and an understanding about diverse stakeholder interests, adds to the evaluation landscape of program logic activities, identification of credible measures, building an evaluation design and developing accountability across organisations and sectors in support of the evaluation process.

The presenters introduce their Strategic and Tactical Evaluation Management (STEM™) model, a stakeholder driven process focused on the alignment of evaluation needs with organisational needs in determining the value and contribution of policies, programs and products to 'bottom line' success.

The four elements of the STEM™ Evaluation Process are: stakeholder engagement, indicator development, evaluation design and reporting relevance. At each stage, a key strategic question is posed, which also has an equivalent evaluation focus (clarify, design, collect and report). Thus, the key question assists in generating an important evaluation outcome, thereby ensuring that stakeholder information needs and organisational needs (the 'investment return') can be positioned and managed for purposes of the evaluation.

A front-end champion is more than a facilitator of evaluation design. They improve the quality of evaluation experience by modelling the "long tail" of relevance at each evaluation stage. The five principles of effective evaluation design and analysis are discussed in the context of a case study involving a peak body focusing on emergency relief and community information.