The DSRA Evaluation
Different organizations are good at doing different things. A hospital may be good at helping people, a branch of the military may be good at defending people, and so on. However, remarkably few organizations are good at learning, and yet it is precisely learning that enables an organization to grow and evolve.
So how does an organization go about learning? While this may sound simple enough, it is not. Different parts of the organization compete for limited resources, and there are typically few, or even no rewards for learning.
This is where an external group such as DSRA can infuse an organization with the expert, empirically-grounded knowledge that is needed for growth. This can occur on a formative basis in which a process is studied as it occurs, or on a summative basis, in which hoped-for outcomes are analyzed against actual, obtained outcomes. The scope and focus of the evaluation may be directed internally, in which an organization studies some aspect of itself, or externally, in which the evaluation is directed at the outside world.