Evaluation

Latest news
OFT publishes its approach to calculating direct benefits to consumers (pdf 162 kb), a summary of the responses (pdf 115 kb) to the discussion document on the deterrent effect of competition enforcement by the OFT and an evaluation of the impact upon productivity of ending resale price maintenance on books (pdf 439 kb).

Evaluation programme
The OFT’s evaluation team aims to meet two needs:

• external accountability: to evaluate whether the OFT delivers its objectives and does so cost-effectively to the taxpayer and Parliament, and
• internal management: to help us prioritise, conduct, and follow up our work to ensure we maximise our impact.

The programme of work is agreed with both policy committee and the OFT board. The programme covers the full range of OFT work.

Under the OFT's comprehensive spending review settlement with HM Treasury we have agreed to deliver measurable benefits to UK consumers of five times our annual budget over the financial years 2008-11, and 3.5 times the budget for Consumer Direct. The programme of evaluation work is tailored to ensure we are able to measure the achievement of the key targets included in the HMT performance framework agreement.

The evaluation team conducts in-depth evaluations of discrete projects, develops frameworks to help project teams estimate impact at both the prioritisation and evaluation stages, and commissions research into wider issues related to the impact of the office. Over time the team aims to embed the majority of the project specific evaluation work within project teams. We have started embedding anticipation of evaluation into our market studies and merger work. 

Previous reports are available on the publications page. We aim to publish all of our research.

Consultation
The OFT impact evaluation team is committed to an open, consultative and impartial evaluation programme. We welcome feedback and suggestions on all areas of our work.
 
Please email any questions or comments: evaluation@oft.gsi.gov.uk

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