Senior Evaluation Analyst

We are seeking an enthusiastic and passionate Senior Research Officer to lead on evaluation work within the Resources and Waste Directorate's Strategic Evidence and Analysis Team.

Resources and waste policy goes to the heart of how society interacts with goods and services, from material extraction, industrial production, through to how it managed and processed as waste. This Directorate sets out policy for how we will preserve material resources by minimising waste, promoting resource efficiency, and moving towards a circular economy.

As part of its portfolio, this Directorate is leading on the delivery of the Collection and Packaging Reforms (CPR) - four waste reform schemes with the aim of improving packaging recyclability and driving recycling rates - that form part of the Government's Major Project Portfolio.

This role is key in ensuring Defra can understand whether policies being delivered have been successful in achieving the objectives and commitments across the Resources and Waste Portfolio.

As part of this role, the Senior Evaluation Officer will be responsible for leading on high profile process, theory-based impact and economic evaluations working closely with contractors and policy colleagues to deliver actionable insights.

Key responsibilities will include management of evaluation projects, developing evaluation plans and Theories of Change, actively engaging policy and delivery colleagues in evaluation to inform decision making, and communicating key insights to influence policy design. This is critical for supporting the Directorate to be better equipped to make decisions on policy design, delivery, and overall approach.

This role offers the opportunity to work across other social research projects within the Directorate, to work alongside a strong community of evaluators and social researchers across Defra Group, and access training to develop their skills and career.

Responsibilities:

• Manage externally commissioned evaluation and research projects ensuring they deliver robust, impactful findings and achieve value for money. This includes the management of external contractors.


• Lead engagement with the policy team and other analysts to support their evidence needs and maximise the impact of the evaluation.


• Promote and disseminate evaluation findings to relevant policy and delivery teams and more widely within the Department and across government departments to ensure key learning feeds into ongoing and new policy development and products have maximum impact.


• Take an active role in Defra's evaluation community, sharing and disseminating good practice to other evaluators.


• Advise on research and evaluation design more broadly within policy areas using learning to feed into ongoing and future projects.


• Work closely with social research, evidence, and policy colleagues on broader analytical work.


Key deliverables that the role is responsible for include:

• Evaluation frameworks and programmes of work for new evaluation activity.


• Theories of change for emerging policy areas.


• Indicator frameworks for emerging policy areas and updating established indicator frameworks, in order to support the monitoring of change across Directorate outcomes.


• Delivery of a series of process evaluations for planned policies across the Directorate.


• Impact evaluation analysis for planned policies across the Directorate.


• Economic value-for-money analysis at the policy level for planned policies across the Directorate.


• Ad-hoc evaluation outputs planned and designed in collaboration with policy and delivery colleagues.