Cabinet Office signs up UCL consultancy to evaluate Fast Stream

The Cabinet Office has signed a deal with an academic consultancy to evaluate the impact of the Civil Service Fast Stream.

UCL Consultants Ltd, a company owned by University College London, will undertake an impact evaluation of the Fast Stream, exploring “whether participating in the Fast Stream leads to improved outcomes compared to a suitable control group”, according to a contract published last week.

The consultancy will also "establish what outcomes are possible to measure using existing administrative data and what new data collection will be required to evaluate the Fast Stream," the contract says.

The Cabinet Office was last month awarded £200,000 to carry out an evaluation of the Fast Stream through the government's Evaluation Accelerator Fund.

The Evaluation Task Force – which chose the winning bids for the third round of the Evaluation Accelerator Fund – said the Cabinet Office would "produce an evaluation report with actionable evidence to inform decisions on how [the Fast Stream] is run and learn lessons for other recruitment schemes”.

It would also “carry out a feasibility study assessing the use of civil service administrative data to evaluate programme outcomes”, the taskforce said.

Announcing the funding allocations last month, Cabinet Office minister John Glen said the department would be “measuring how recruitment is impacted by accelerated development schemes, like the Fast Stream”.

UCL Consultants describes itself as a “leading provider of academic consultancy services... drawing on world-class expertise from across UCL”.

Last month, CSW revealed that applications to the fast stream have fallen by more than 50% in the last three years.