http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
How do you know if you are making a difference?
a practical handbook for public service organisations
Front Cover -- How do you know if you are Making a Difference?: A Practical Handbook for Public Service Organisations -- Copyright information -- Dedication -- Table of contents -- List of figures and tables -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- 1 Why is it so hard to know if you are making a difference? -- Why it is so hard to know the difference you are making -- The benefits of investing in knowing the difference you are making -- What you need to go on this journey -- A strategic approach -- Embedding learning and evaluation into organisational practice
Public service improvement as practice -- Meanings: ideas and aspirations -- Competencies: skills, knowledge, technique -- Materials: objects, technologies -- Our approach to understanding if you are making a difference -- Anchored in practice and the practitioners of public services -- Overview of this book -- Try it yourself -- 2 Why complexity thinking can help you understand public services -- A shift in thinking for complexity-informed approaches -- Working with complex systems -- Doing the right thing, not the same thing every time -- Ways of managing in complexity
Navigating through complexity -- People at the heart of complex change -- People experience the system in different ways -- Co-production and participatory approaches -- The 'who' in data and feedback -- Leadership for complex work -- Evaluating in complexity -- The central concept of 'contribution' -- Contribution analysis -- Appropriately different evaluation every time -- How our approach helps to work with complexity -- Building blocks of our complexity-informed approach -- Try it yourself -- Questions for exploring the complexity of your work
3 What data and evidence do you need to see what difference you are making? -- What is included when we talk about data, evidence and feedback? -- Good data and evidence for complex change -- Let's measure what matters -- Data cultures and how they affect organisations and initiatives -- Making the case for qualitative data -- Capturing evidence from practice -- the power of reflection -- What is happening when people 'use' data? -- Getting started on a data improvement journey -- Try it yourself -- 4 Owning your initiative's outcomes and impacts -- Navigating the landscape of outcomes and impacts
Drivers of outcome- or impact-based approaches -- The pressures of working to multiple outcome frameworks -- Escaping multiple outcome demands by owning your outcomes -- An introduction to outcome thinking -- What we mean by an outcome -- Outcomes (or impacts) as a framework for action -- Outcomes at different levels -- Some common myths about outcomes -- A new way of working with outcomes -- Owning your outcomes: what this means in practice -- Try it yourself -- 5 Embrace the complex context -- Why context matters -- The benefits of taking time to work with context