AI enhanced evaluation and outcomes management: A case study from 14 EU cities

The traditional approach to evaluating a programme, plan or policy usually requires specialist consultant help to understand key metrics, delve through stacks of data sources, manually align to thematic areas and strategic goals, reach out to project officers and suppliers to provide data through multiple means, and then try to pull it all together at the end of a project to demonstrate impact against the original objectives. Tiresome, costly and inefficient! But with new tools, digital transformation and the advancement of AI, evaluating public sector objectives, actions and outcomes can be enhanced to bring evaluation into the modern age and improve evidenced based decision making for public authorities. We have been working collaboratively with 14 European Cities all vying for European Capital of Culture to truly evaluate and demonstrate the value of cultural investment. This includes utilising generative AI to digitise their strategic and action plans, develop a set of harmonised indicators and metrics to demonstrate cultural impact and collectively evaluate 100s of programmes and projects across the 14 cities to evidence the impact of cultural investment. In this talk, we will use the 14 cities as a case study for how we can use digital tools for greater evaluation of public plans. Key takeaways will include: - How AI can be used to build thematically aligned objectives and outcomes - How we can harmonise indicator sets to demonstrate impact actress multiple themes - How digital tools can aid more joined-up cross departmental action for improved efficiency and cost saving.