Infrastructure Australia identifies and assesses challenges, opportunities and reforms for enhancing quality of life for Australians. Our 2019 Audit identified quality, affordability and access as critical outcomes for service users. Our Sustainability Principles provide a holistic framework for community sustainability across economic, environmental, social and governance outcomes (quadruple bottom line).25
Using theory of change enables Infrastructure Australia to apply a structured approach to advising governments on policy that enhances Australia's infrastructure. As a systematic way to understand and document complex changes, it informs and complements other assessment tools we use, such as multi-criteria analysis and cost-benefit analysis.
Infrastructure Australia has used strategic analysis frameworks that are suitable for defining and prioritising reform. This approach draws on the experience of the social impact sector. The application of these methodologies recognises the complex set of factors that can contribute to our vision of improving quality of life and increasing national productivity.
Theory of change has been adopted because it:
• Leads to greater impact: An outcomes-focused approach encourages clarity about the desired impact and enables testing, learning and iterating to make sure reforms are effective. This process can improve design and delivery, foster collaboration to achieve shared goals, and drive innovation that ultimately leads to better outcomes.
• Prioritises infrastructure users and the community: An outcomes-focused approach puts the needs of infrastructure users and communities at the centre of policy development. With this focus, Infrastructure Australia can work with stakeholders to empower them to be agents of change and underpin improved outcomes for individuals and their communities.
• Supports innovation: By building evidence about what works and why, theory of change supports finding new ways of addressing challenging problems and being more responsive to dynamic conditions. Accounting for other interdependencies helps to identify implementable reform pathways.
• Engages and focuses work: By providing a conceptual backbone that links issues with strategic thinking, it makes the intended outcomes clearer. This facilitates collaboration when dealing with the complex challenges of infrastructure policy reform.
• Provides greater transparency: Reforms that demonstrate an evidence-based pathway to how outcomes would be achieved are more likely to be adopted. An outcomes-focused approach provides greater clarity to all change agents involved in implementing a reform.
• Supports collaboration: Individual and community needs often span a mix of economic, social, environmental and governance objectives. Understanding interdependencies by applying theory of change helps the different change agents to agree on the pathway to reform.
• Informs next steps: Identifying interdependencies and preconditions to change at a strategic level provides informed input to subsequent implementation work, such as regulatory impact statements and investment prioritisation.