Turbocharging impact – building capability for more impactful science across NZ’s Crown Research Institutions (CRIs)

Dr Kara Scally-Irvine (KSI Consulting)

This session will tell the story of the collaborative effort across NZ’s seven CRIs, building ‘evaluative’ capability across their organisations and ‘turbocharging’ the impact of their work.

This collaborative effort – via the ‘impact planning evaluation network’ (iPEN) has been active for around 4 – 5 years. However in 2019 the group embarked upon a targeted programme of work in this area. This has included the engagement of some specialist support (myself), to help accelerate progress in key areas. So this session will focus mostly on describing what has been done, what we’ve learned, and also how this fits into the broader context of building impact capability in the science and innovation.

I will describe the process we have taken to first understand the current ‘baseline’ of capability, and then walk you through the multiple linked activities we are developing and implementing. This has included devising a set of training modules that work for our context, and designing tools and resources to support these. I’ll also highlights some of the key issues we’ve considered to ensure what we are developing will work across the full diversity of the CRIs, as well as how we have been thinking about systems drivers and constraints in the process, and how we’ve drawn on the literature in this area to guide our work.

Kara will speak about her experiences and an interactive session will follow.

Time: 12.30pm – 1:30pm

Date: Monday 24 August

Dr Kara Scally-Irvine

Kara has worked in research, monitoring, and evaluation for over 15 years. She has worked with a range of organisations both government and not-for-profits across a range of sectors including health, education, sport and recreation, innovation, regulatory systems, the environmental sector, and international development. She is particularly passionate about building evaluative capability so teams and organisations can maximise the impact of their work.

She is currently supporting the seven CRIs in their joint Impact Planning Evaluation Network (iPEN), and previously worked with Ako Aotearoa (in partnership with NZQA) to build the capability of the non-university tertiary education organisations. She also supported KiwiNet develop their first impact framework.

Kara holds a PhD from the University of Queensland in integrated conservation and development, systems, and international development; and a Post Graduate Diploma of Science (Distinction) Environmental Science, BSc (Zoology and Psychology), BComm (Management) all from the University of Otago.

She has also been board member for English Language Partners New Zealand since 2017, and joined the board of the Aotearoa New Zealand Evaluation Association last year.