The conference, Learn Fast, Deliver Better Innovating and Using Evidence to Reform Public Services, was held in collaboration with the School for Government at King’s College London and took place on Friday 19 June 2026 at KCL’s Strand campus. It was attended by more than 370 government analysts, policy professionals, academics, and evaluators. The event was a call for action to build the habits that will make the government genuinely learn its way to better outcomes and use evaluation as a tool for innovative, better delivery.
Opening the conference, Juliet Chua, Director General for the Economic and Domestic Secretariat (EDS) at the Cabinet Office, invited civil servants from across all professions to leverage evaluation as a catalyst for effective reform. Her remarks underscored the alignment of this approach with the Cabinet Secretary’s broader ambitions for rigorous, innovation-driven public service transformation.
Levin Wheller, Head of the ETF, then set the stage for the day, linking the ETF core mission and new strategy to the wider government’s ambitions for public service transformation. He highlighted how the new ETF strategy accelerates this mission by shifting our focus from making evaluations happen to ensuring they drive better outcomes; and highlighted the Taskforce’s new priority workstreams.
Innovation & Evidence in Action
The conference showcased government evaluation projects using ‘test and learn’ approaches to improve delivery and how rigorous methodologies are being applied to complex public sector problems, including homelessness, reoffending and victims support.
The event also included speakers such as Julia Gillard (Chair of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, KCL & 27th Prime Minister of Australia), Conrad Smewing (Director General, Public Spending HMT), Catherine Hutchinson (Chief Scientific Advisor & Director of Analysis, Department of Work and Pensions), and Jen Rubin (Chair of the School for Government, KCL) who participated in a panel chaired by Jen Gold (Executive Director of Research at the Economic and Social Research Council, ESRC) and reflected on what it takes to sustain an evidence culture.
Contributions from Jonathan Slater (Visiting Professor, KCL and ex-Permanent Secretary, Department for Education) provided unique perspectives of using evidence in different contexts. King’s College London’s Michael Sanders (Director of the School for Government, KCL) shared a behavioural science perspective on why governments systematically resist learning, offering research-backed strategies on how to overcome these barriers.
Ministerial address
In a ministerial address at the event, Minister Satvir Kaur reframed evaluation from a retrospective bureaucratic hurdle into the engine of government reform. Her address championed a shift toward an evidence-led culture as a collective victory that respects the taxpayer, improves outcomes for the public, and empowers public servants to confidently innovate, learn, and deliver better services.
Minister Satvir Kaur said
Evaluation is an essential component of a learning culture across the public sector. It helps us understand our problems better, develop and optimise our policies, and robustly test their impact.
To achieve meaningful reform, we must shift our focus from simply ‘measuring what happened’ to ‘learning how to improve in real-time’. This ensures that government is always driven by rigorous evidence and that taxpayer money is spent effectively.
This conference is our opportunity to show that evaluation, experimentation, and learning are not the brakes on reform, they are the engine.’
The event concluded with closing remarks from Steffan Jones, Director of the Joint Data and Analysis Directorate (JDAC) in the Cabinet Office (CO), who reinforced the conference’s core message to deliver real change under pressure, the civil service must build the habits, tools, and culture to genuinely learn its way to better outcomes.
To find out more about the Evaluation Task Force work and access further resources, please visit the ETF website.
