Value for Investment
What is Value for Investment?
Value for Investment is an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach that brings together insights from evaluation and economics. Our longstanding collaborative partner, Dr Julian King, pioneered the Value for Investment (VfI) system.
Dovetail is both proud and privileged to be leading the implementation of VfI across a range of evaluation assignments in Aotearoa and internationally.
VfI is designed to answer questions about how well resources are used, whether the resource use creates enough value, and how more value can be created. This approach explores value in a variety of ways, including but not limited to social, cultural, environmental and economic value, and also actively incorporates concepts such as equity and effectiveness.
The VfI approach provides the basis for making and presenting judgements in a way that opens both the reasoning process and the evidence to scrutiny. VfI is
Interdisciplinary – combines theory and practice from evaluation and economics
Mixed methods – uses qualitative and quantitative evidence, to understand the story behind the numbers
Evaluative reasoning – applies explicit criteria (dimensions of value) and standards (levels of value) to provide a transparent basis for making evaluative judgements
Participatory – engages stakeholders in evaluation co-design and sense-making
What does a VfI approach look like?
The VfI system combines economic and evaluative thinking, to support accountability and good resource allocation, as well as reflection, learning and adaptation. The VfI process is intuitive to learn and practical to apply.
Through VfI, we work with clients and stakeholders to:
Define how a programme or policy creates value, and for whom
Define what good value would look like for the investment involved
Organise evidence of performance and value
Interpret the evidence on an agreed basis and
Present a clear and robust performance story.
A leading New Zealand-based VfI provider
Dovetail is now one of New Zealand’s leading providers of VfI, and we are regularly partnering with Julian King, and consulting economist Dr Aaron Schiff, in designing and implementation of VfI-based evaluations.
When our clients commission a VfI-focused assignment from us, they are purchasing a collaborative process that has broad stakeholder buy-in, and which delivers concise and actionable insights that enable decision-making.
We recently completed an independent evaluation of new Youth Primary Mental Health and Addiction services for Te Whatu Ora/Health NZ. The approach used rubrics to bring together different aspects of value, ranging from economic to kaupapa Māori values, alongside mixed methods evidence. In this, and other assignments, we take a participatory approach, working collaboratively with stakeholders in evaluation co-design, fact-finding and sense-making.
Other applications of VfI led by Dovetail include:
A programme that provides real-time information on water quality
An urbanism initiative that supports the education and engagement of children in developing countries.
An evaluation of the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport, which was underpinned by VfI principles, combining insights from evaluation and economics.
We will be publishing findings from other projects as they are released.
Developed through doctoral research, the VfI system is in use globally. It is applied at a range of scales from one-off evaluations to whole-organisation performance frameworks. VfI has won awards in Australia and the UK recognising its innovative approach and widespread application.
More detail, open-access resources, and VfI training can be accessed at www.julianking.co.nz/vfi/