RDA TIGER D6.5: Final quality evaluation report on the RDA TIGER WG services

This report is the final deliverable of the RDA TIGER project’s Service Quality work package (WP6). It contains an overview and assessment of the project’s approach for measuring the success of its services, how it sought and responded to feedback, an analysis of its key performance indicators, and descriptions of the possible sustainability pathways for the project's results and outputs. Finally, the deliverable concludes with a brief reflection on its overall performance and how the experiences of those who delivered the project could inform future initiatives. Set against the evaluatory model described in earlier WP6 deliverables and the key performance indicators reiterated below, the project was successful in delivering its services; the service gaps model provided the project partners with a framework by which to invite feedback from service users and allowed the project to respond to feedback with a coordinated, cross-work package approach. Building on the overall sense of goodwill from the RDA community toward the project, the feedback received was overwhelmingly positive. Project-wide and project-specific key performance indicators afforded service providers and work package leads the opportunity to gauge the success of each individual service. These are presented and analysed in detail below. The feedback provided by service users is also presented in detail below. An analysis of the qualitative and quantitative measures found that, while service users were in the main pleased with the services provided, the project still had aspects of its service offering that needed to be adjusted throughout its lifespan. Feedback was sought and provided on an ongoing basis, meaning the project partners, and WP6 in particular, were required to constantly assess and respond to input from the user community. Alongside this, critical self-evaluation from service providers ensured that the services remained fit for purpose and responsive to the needs of its diverse users. Alongside the various indicators and feedback that were used to measure the overall quality of the services provided by RDA TIGER, the sustainability of the project’s outputs and outcomes are taken as another benchmark by which to judge the project’s success. Though the uptake of the results of the project cannot be known at this point, various possible pathways and options have been established during the project lifecycle and are described below. Finally, some brief recommendations are made for those future projects or initiatives who take on similar or related assignments to that of RDA TIGER. These recommendations are contextualised in the conclusion of this report: Ensure that whatever critical or evaluation framework is employed is one that requires input from multiple participants within and/or across different service providers Focus on the concision of key performance indicators, success gauges or metrics, ensuring that each allows you to track something specific (i.e., does not need other information or data to interpret) and worth measuring (i.e., not a “nice to know” statistic) Allow space for discussions of service(s) sustainability as early as possible, ideally in parallel to service design and piloting Provide multiple methods of feedback to be provided, including ways of recording and responding to conversational and/or anecdotal feedback; communicate to service users the value not only to service providers but to the user community itself of their feedback Establish a culture of internal self-evaluation and appraisal of services which allows those delivering the services a say in how these are designed, delivered and adapted.