Evaluation
Methodology
This evaluation focused on a sample of projects managed by the RDCs. It included projects that achieved significant milestones or had been completed between two and five years prior to the year of evaluation. There are three elements in the evaluation process:
RDCs engaged independent economic consultants for the evaluations. In total, a pool of seven
consultancies prepared the cost-benefit studies used as the basis of this evaluation report.
- Examine the returns from a sufficient number of highly successful projects selected by the RDCs to demonstrate positive returns. These projects were included in year one and will be included in the evaluation process in subsequent years, when particular aspects of the portfolio are selected for assessment. No such projects were included in 2009.
- Examine the returns from randomly selected projects (from a pool of over 600 projects relevant to the sampling period). The projects, while not statistically representative of the pool, provide insights into the performance of the RDC portfolio. This randomly selected group will be increased in number in subsequent evaluations to allow statistically significant conclusions to be made.
- Examine and evaluate a sample of current RDC programs that involve collaboration and have a high level of national importance. The area of biosecurity and food safety R&D was the first to be selected for review and several different biosecurity projects were evaluated.
- Treasury
- Department of Finance and Deregulation
- Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry
- Productivity Commission
- Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
RDCs engaged independent economic consultants for the evaluations. In total, a pool of seven
consultancies prepared the cost-benefit studies used as the basis of this evaluation report.
- Agtrans Research
- BDA Group
- EconSearch
- IDA Economics
- AgEconPlus
- Centre for International Economics
- AEC Group
- ACIL Tasman
