Gov’t Eval TIG Week: Elise Garvey on Government Evaluation TIG Week

I am Elise Garvey, Management Auditor with the King County Auditor’s Office in Seattle, Washington and I serve as the co-chair of the Government Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG). In 2015, the Government Evaluation TIG is celebrating its 25^th anniversary, and there is nothing like an anniversary to motivate a time of reflection and inspire a look to the future. At this year’s conference, the Government TIG hosted a session called “Defining Government Evaluation: What Is “Government” Evaluation from a Multi-Cultural Perspective?” One of our posts later this week will provide a recap of that think tank, but this post is intended to introduce you to a type of government evaluation that potentially could expand your professional network and resources: performance auditing.

Lessons Learned: The term “auditing” generally conjures up images of finances and taxes, but there is a branch called performance auditing that is fundamentally similar to evaluation. Our guiding document, the Yellow Book, defines performance auditing as “audits that provide findings or conclusions based on an evaluation of sufficient, appropriate evidence against criteria.” Performance audits cover a wide range of topics, including housing and homelessness, libraries, climate action, capital projects and infrastructure, and emergency medical services, among many others.

Rad Resources: The Association of Local Government Auditors (ALGA) is one of several professional organizations in the auditing world. Check out the ALGA website to learn more about performance auditing and to connect with people working in local governments across the U.S. and Canada with a growing presence from countries across the world. If your evaluation will involve working with local government, there may be a performance auditor you can reach out to for helpful information or resources!

The American Evaluation Association is celebrating Gov’t Eval TIG Week with our colleagues in the Government Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to aea365 come from our Gov’t Eval TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.