Australia’s biosecurity system is complex, comprising multiple actions undertaken by various system participants at different points along the biosecurity continuum – off-shore, at the border, and on-shore – to manage biosecurity risks. Collectively, system participants invest significant resources in these risk management activities. So how do we know if we our investments are hitting their mark and achieving their intended outcome?
As part of the Evaluating the Health of Australia’s biosecurity system project, CEBRA developed a comprehensive framework to help evaluate the health (i.e. performance) of the national biosecurity system. This framework has been an important starting point for considering how Australian governments could evaluate the performance of the biosecurity system, and for engagement around what shape such a framework could take and the purposes that it might serve. One key suggestion of this project was the use of rubrics. The presentation focusses on qualitative methods in performance evaluation, focussing on the use of evaluative rubrics.