Evaluation activities support decision-making that can contribute to efficient and effective management of energy programs. Evaluative information should be available to inform decisions made during the critical planning, budgeting, implementation, analysis, and communications cycles of the program.

Program evaluation can provide essential information to inform every decision in an organization’s programs and operations, including revisions to strategic goals, resource allocation, program modification, redesign, implementation, and policymaking. Several examples are provided below.

Decisions to Make Program Improvements

  • Whether to modify or make timely adjustments to the program design or implementation to improve the rate, or quality, of program achievement relative to the resources committed.
  • Decide whether new technologies or efficiency practices should be added to the program.

Decisions to Revise Program Goals and Strategy

  • Adjust program goals or objectives; revise objectives to make them more realistic.
  • Target new or different markets, customers, or business organizations and allies.

Resource Allocation Decisions

  • Decide how to fund and allocate, or reallocate program resources to best achieve program research, or serve key markets and intended customers.
  • Eliminate activities that have proven ineffective and drop delivery components determined to not be cost-effective.
  • Decide on whether to continue program elements or the program and at what level of effort, including replicating program components found to be most cost-effective.
  • Hold / suspend an activity for a period of time to re-evaluate.

Decisions to Communicate Program Strategy and Value

  • Decide to incorporate evaluation results data into the overall communication effort, such as to support the organization's "brand" messaging and its communication of value proposition to appropriators, stakeholders, and others.

Operational Decisions

  • Decide how best to improve program operations (e.g., increase efficiency of operations via streamlining, refining, or redesigning organization functions).
  • Determine if staffing levels need to be changed based on current and anticipated mission requirements, and if so how?

Related

Types of Evaluations
EERE uses several types of evaluation to quantify impacts, assess progress, and promote improvement.
What and When to Evaluate
In general, different types of evaluation are carried out over different parts of a program's life cycle.
EERE Evaluation Requirements
The internal and external evaluation requirements for EERE programs related to peer reviews, Go/No-Go reviews, and the Evidence Act.