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Jess Dart (Clear Horizon Consulting)

Evaluating the impact of programs that seek to influence Government policy is notoriously tricky. You might bring rigorous and relevant evidence to the doorstep of policy makers, but there are no guarantees that they will use that evidence to inform policy. Equally, your work may be achieving great strides in building coalitions and getting key messages into the ears of ministers only to see the opposing forces push back and bury the agenda. It can be a long process, without guarantees of success. It is estimated to take an average of 10 years for a law to change, so what hope do we have of demonstrating influence in typical program timeframes?

Blending Most Significant Change (MSC) with Outcomes Harvesting, the "Significant Policy Change" tool, offers a structured way to capture policy influence, and a process for verifying and ranking the importance of each instance. It can even be used to develop measurable targets.

This paper will provide an overview of SPC and explore the benefits and challenges, and will draw on the recent experience of piloting this technique in a bilateral aid program in Indonesia.