1.7 Limitations of the Evaluation

The following limitations apply to this evaluation:

• The evaluation is not intended to assess whether investments in the SMG programme provided value for money (cost benefit analysis) for government.
• The scope of the evaluation did not extend to questioning other government agencies on their investment practices and whether Māori service providers they invested in produced high quality outcomes. Therefore the evaluation was unable to address two of the four high level outcomes for the SMG programme, namely whether:
  • Māori organisations involved in the delivery of government service contracts achieved high quality outcomes and were accountable to stakeholders (Outcome 1); and
  • government funding was targeted appropriately (Outcome 2).
  
  Assessment of the achievement of these outcomes is more appropriately addressed through the standard contract monitoring and evaluation activities of those agencies that are
  contracting for services.
• The achievement of Outcomes 3 and 4 is addressed in section 2.3 of this report: Outcomes for Te Puni Kōkiri. These outcomes are as follows:
  • To contribute to the growth of strong Māori organisations able to meet organisations’ goals and take advantage of future opportunities (Outcome 3); and
  • -To increase stakeholder confidence in the accountability of Māori organisations (Outcome 4).

The evaluation noted that in the absence of information from other government agencies, the extent of achievement of these two outcomes is based primarily on assessments made by the evaluators. On that basis, some caution should be taken when interpreting the discussion.