Evaluation of Closing the Gap Review

The Closing the Gap agreement, signed in July 2020, is an agreement between the Coalition of Peaks and all Australian governments. It sets out a number of reforms that Australian governments – national, state and territory, and local – have committed to. There are four priority areas of reform:

formal partnerships and shared decision-making
building the community-controlled sector
changing the way governments do business
shared access to data and information at a regional level.

The Australian Government’s Productivity Commission is required to review progress towards the Closing the Gap agreement each three years, with the first such review published in February 2024.

The Productivity Commission has a standard process for reviewing its work, but on this occasion, asked Yulang to carry out an external evaluation of the process involved in developing the report. That is the first time this has happened in the Commission’s 25-year history.

In a limited timeframe, we carried out a number of interviews and ran a workshop to gather the views of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff, and reviewed available documentation. We also reviewed the available documentation. Our findings and recommendations, if accepted, would support the Productivity Commission’s review process to more fully embody the Closing the Gap priority reforms required of all government agencies.