Evaluation Registry FAQs
This page provides answers to frequently asked questions for the Evaluation Registry.
Documents
Details
Q. What is the Evaluation Registry?
A. The Evaluation Registry is the home for all Government evaluations. It is a website where all planned, live and published evaluations conducted or commissioned by Government Departments are registered. Evaluations on the Registry can be searched and browsed by users looking to learn from previous evaluations of Government policies, projects and programmes.
Q. What is an evaluation?
A. An “evaluation” refers to impact, process, and value for money evaluation studies conducted in line with the Magenta Book. The Magenta Book defines evaluation as “as a systematic assessment of the design, implementation and outcomes of an intervention.” Evaluations help us understand the impact of an intervention, whether it was good value for money, and whether we could have delivered it more effectively.
Q. Does my policy/project/programme need to be evaluated?
A. All policies, programmes and projects should be subject to proportionate evaluation. The Green Book states that all proposals for funding should include a proportionate budget, and a management plan, for monitoring and evaluation.
Not all interventions will require the same level of scrutiny or have the same learning needs. In the case of a low-risk, well-evidenced and low priority intervention, a light-touch monitoring and evaluation exercise to ensure it has been delivered as intended and achieved the predicted outcomes is likely to be all that is necessary. On the other hand, a high risk, high profile, high spend and/or high learning potential intervention is likely to require a large-scale evaluation.
Q. Does my evaluation need to be registered?
A. All planned and live evaluations and evaluation reports signed off from 1st April 2024 onwards should be registered on the Evaluation Registry. Evaluation reports should be published and entered on the Registry within 12 weeks of sign-off by the relevant internal Departmental governance processes. This applies to planned evaluations, live evaluations, and evaluation reports produced by all Central Government Departments.
This includes:
- Pilot evaluations
- Impact evaluations
- Process evaluations
- Value for Money evaluations (cost benefit and cost effectiveness analyses)
- Evidence syntheses, including systematic reviews, rapid evidence assessments, meta-analyses, meta-ethnography and realist synthesis
- Post implementation reviews, in cases where these apply one or more evaluation methods outlined in Annex A of the Magenta Book
This does not include:
- Regulatory or Enactment Impact assessments, also known as regulatory impact assessments or final impact assessments, used for policy regulation
- Feasibility studies
- Literature reviews
- Post implementation reviews, in cases where these do not apply evaluation methods outlined in Annex A of the Magenta Book
- Benefits monitoring and realisation reports (excluding cost benefit or cost effectiveness analyses)
- Outputs from social research, where this is not part of an evaluation
Q. Who is responsible for registering evaluations?
A. The organisation responsible for delivering the evaluation of an intervention is responsible for creating and updating the Registry entry for the evaluation. The individual responsible for creating the Registry entry will vary between departments (for example, in some departments central evaluation teams manage all entries, whereas in others the policy or project delivery colleagues may be responsible for this). Check with your central evaluation team or lead if you are not sure who should create and maintain the entry.
This will typically be the organisation delivering the intervention, but in cases where multiple organisations are working together to deliver an intervention the organisation responsible for overseeing the evaluation of said intervention should be responsible for creating the Registry entry. If there is no single organisation responsible for the evaluation, please discuss with your central evaluation team/lead to decide which organisation is best placed to take on this responsibility.
Q. Why do we need to register planned evaluations?
A. The GSR Publication Protocol states that “Departments should make high level information publicly available on all research and analysis commissioned externally, and internal research where there is an intention to publish. Announcements should be made as early as is practicable”. Please refer to the Government Social Research publication protocol for more information.
There is no requirement to upload an evaluation plan or framework in a document format. However, it is best practice to publish evaluation plans formally on GOV.UK in addition to registering them. The published plan can then be hyperlinked in the associated Registry entry.
Q. Why do we need to provide planned publication dates for evaluation reports?
A. The Registry aims to implement the terms of the Government Social Research publication protocol, which states that “Publication dates should be preannounced. If this is not feasible, for example due to short notice requirements, departments need alternative approaches, where possible, to promote public trust in the transparency and objectivity of release arrangements.” Departments should provide an estimated publication date for the final evaluation report.
This information is used to monitor which evaluations are still ongoing, and which are due to publish results shortly. This information also helps the Task Force identify where evaluation evidence is being withheld, and ensure results are published where appropriate.
The date provided on the Registry can easily be amended and updated on the site at any time, and users should look to ensure these dates remain up to date if publication timelines change.
Q. When do planned evaluations need to be registered?
A. Teams should register planned evaluations “as early as is practicable” under the terms of the Government Social Research publication protocol. For the Registry this means registering planned evaluations at the stage at which the plan for the evaluation has been approved through the relevant internal governance processes. In all cases plans should be registered before the first round of data collection for the evaluation takes place.
We know evaluation plans may also change along the way in relation to scope change or feasibility of planned methods. Users are able to edit and update entries on the Registry to reflect changes in evaluation plans whenever they need to. Entries should be regularly maintained as an up-to-date record for the planned evaluation.
Q. What is the approval process for making an entry on the Registry?
A. Before registering evaluations on the platform, users are responsible for ensuring that the planned evaluation or report has been approved through the relevant internal governance processes prior to registration. If you are unsure of the approvals you require before creating a new Registry entry, please get in touch with your Department’s central evaluation team or lead to check.
New entries, and updates to existing entries, will need to be approved on the site by someone with publisher site permissions within your department. Once you have created a new entry (or made an update to an existing entry) on the site you can submit it to a publisher for approval via the “submit for approval” button.
If you have further questions, please email evaluation.registry@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Q. What information do I need to provide for a Registry entry?
A. You will need the following information to register an evaluation: 1. Title of the evaluation 2. The names of all organisations involved in the evaluation 3. Type of evaluation (impact, process, value for money) 4. Evaluation methods 5. Description of the intervention 6. Whether your evaluation is an evaluation of a grant scheme 7. Whether your evaluation is an evaluation of a Major Project 8. Start and end dates of the intervention 9. Planned publication date for the evaluation report
If the evaluation has published one or more reports, you will also need to provide:
- A link to the published report/s
- A summary of the evaluation findings
- The cost of the evaluation.
Q. The evaluation I am working on will produce multiple reports. Should I create an entry per report, or one entry for all the reports?
A. Users should create one Registry entry per evaluation, not per report. If an evaluation contains multiple aspects, for example, a cost benefit analysis and a randomised control trial, these should both be included in a single entry. Users can add links to multiple published reports in a single entry, and should not create multiple entries per evaluation report.
Q. Do I need to register historical evaluations on the Registry?
A. If the evaluation was completed before April 2024, it is not a requirement to register this. All planned and live evaluations and evaluation reports signed off from April 2024 must be registered. The site is therefore not a comprehensive list of all historical Government evaluations.
However, the more evaluations we have on the Registry, the more useful it will be as a source of evidence for people planning evaluations, or new projects and policies - so if you would like to register historical evaluations currently missing from the site, we encourage you to do so.
Q. Are there any exemptions to the mandatory requirements?
A. Yes: please see the official Registry guidance for further information on exemptions from requirements to registering evaluations.
Q. Do I need to publish my evaluation report on GOV.UK as well as the Registry?
A. Evaluation reports must be published separately online before they can be added to a Registry entry. This may be on GOV.UK or it may be on another site. Linking an evaluation report to an existing Registry entry just requires you to copy and paste the link to the published evaluation report in the relevant field. All government evaluations should be published and made available to the public by default, as per the Government Social Research publication protocol.
Evaluation plans, however, do not need to be published separately online before they can be entered on the Registry (although Departments are encouraged to do so as a matter of best practice). Completion of the compulsory fields for registering a planned or live evaluation on the site is all that is required to register a planned evaluation, although there is an option to add a link to a published evaluation plan if you wish to.
Q. Can I access the Evaluation Registry? / Who can access the Evaluation Registry?
A. Any employee of a Government Department, Arms Length Body, or What Works Centre in the UK can create an account for the Registry in order to log in, browse, and register evaluations. Click here to register for an account. If you are having difficulty accessing the Registry, please get in touch with the team: evaluation.registry@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
If you are not employed by one of the organisation types listed above, you will not be able to access the Registry until the public launch in March 2025. Following the public launch, any member of the public will be able to view and browse the evaluations on the Registry. Members of the public will not be able to register evaluations on the site.
Q. What happens if Departments don’t comply with mandatory requirements?
A. The Evaluation Task Force will be monitoring uptake and usage of the Evaluation Registry on an ongoing basis. In cases where Departments which have been mandated to use the Registry fail to enter required evaluation plans and reports on the tool, the Evaluation Task Force will follow up in the first instance with Departmental central evaluation teams or leads.
In the case of continued failure to comply, the issue will be escalated to the Office for Statistical Regulation under the existing terms of the Code of Practice for Statistics and GSR Publication Protocol in addition to HM Treasury spending teams, which the Evaluation Task Force works closely with to ensure Departments are complying with all evaluation requirements for Government Departments.
Q. I have found an entry on the Registry which is inaccurate, or is a duplicate of another entry. What should I do?
A. Please email evaluation.registry@cabinetoffice.gov.uk with a link to the entry in question. We can get in touch with the evaluation lead in the relevant department to ensure it is updated.
Q. I have questions or feedback about the Evaluation Registry - who can I talk to?
A. If we haven’t answered your question here, please get in touch with the team: evaluation.registry@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.
Updates to this page
Published 15 May 2024Last updated 5 December 2024 + show all updates
-
Updates to FAQs to reflect recent updates to the official guidance.
-
Edited an answer to add more information.
-
Deleted a question as it was a duplicate for another one.
-
Added a question
-
Changes to wording to reflect the updated Registry guidance.
-
First published.