Rapid Mid-Term Evaluation of the Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data Program

The Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) Program is the NSW Government’s central resource for sharing and enabling environmental data.  SEED was created in 2016 to provide access to the environmental evidence base underpinning decisions made about the environment in NSW. The SEED Portal provides access to over 6,000 environmental assets from government, researchers, industry and the community.

ARTD was commissioned to undertake a mid-term evaluation of the SEED Program, following our work with the SEED team on a Strategic Roadmap in 2024, and on the development of a Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Improvement (MERI) Framework for the program in 2021. The SEED Strategic Roadmap outlines a phased approach for the program to evolve from a portal that enables the sharing of data, to one that also enables insights and transparently informs environmental decision-making.

As described in SEED’s MERI Framework, the purpose of the mid-term evaluation was to rapidly review evidence to determine the how the SEED Program had been implemented, identify emerging outcomes and recommend improvements. There was also a need for the SEED team to understand evidence gaps to ensure the MERI Framework captures the right data to support decision-making in the next phases in the Roadmap. We also undertook case studies of users, to provide data about how SEED data is used in decision-making, as well as insights about different user types and their experiences.

Insights were needed in a short timeframe, to feed into other projects being conducted in preparation for the next phase of the Roadmap. We adopted rapid and agile approaches to deliver the evaluation and case studies in just over 3 months.

We used a mixed-methods approach involving stakeholder interviews, a focus group, a survey of users, and review and analysis of existing documents and data, which also functioned as the evidence gap analysis.

The evidence gap analysis provided an opportunity to:

• review what data had been collected on which indicators from the SEED MERI Framework
• which indicators were more and less relevant four years on from their development
• identify what could be added to help SEED better monitor and evaluate the performance of the program and portal.

This supported recommendations about refinements to the MERI Framework.

Our rapid evaluation approach involved dividing responsibility for new data collection and analysis of existing data and documents between two project managers, to enable work to occur concurrently. We held weekly project meetings between our project managers, as well as with the SEED team, allowing us to continually revisit the rapid 3 month timeframe and adjust our approach as required.

Meetings with the SEED team provided an opportunity to present, test and validate findings as they emerged, and to gather contextual information on data trends. This helped to streamline the evaluation report feedback process, allowing us to deliver within 3 months. This also allowed the SEED team to integrate findings early into their workflows on other projects.

We staggered work so that while the SEED team were reviewing the evaluation report, we were preparing 7 user case studies, drawing on data from a survey of 48 users.

The agreed agile ways of working allowed us to produce an evaluation that met the SEED team’s needs within a short timeframe. The evaluation findings and recommendations, as well as insights from the case studies, are being used to plan for the next phase in SEED’s development.