ANZEA Conference 2022

Are you a funder, provider or evaluator working on long-standing and profoundly entrenched complex, wicked problems? Have you noticed commissioning and contracting sometimes gets in the way of the programme's intended goals or services? Have you seen or had to use workarounds to make contracting possible? You are not alone. This session is for you.  

This session is for funders, providers or evaluators looking for innovative ways to think through commissioning and contracting issues in programme and service implementation. This session may change how you design and evaluate programmes in the future. New research shows commissioning and contracting can help or hamper innovative initiatives, particularly for Māori and Pacific providers. Tensions abound in navigating traditional contracting rules and procedures associated with New Public Management.

Evaluators who understand these tensions may be better able to explain gaps in programme and service delivery and suggest ways to address them.  This session will lean into some of the critical commissioning and contracting tensions. Instead of the prevailing rigid, predetermined ways of contracting for accountability only, this session will show how a complexity framing can help focus on more equitable service provision. We will introduce you to some new and successful ways of thinking about commissioning and contracting that are complexity-informed.  These methods and approaches will quickly demonstrate alternative ways of looking at commissioning and contracting.