Overview

Lotic Consulting is focused on helping clients measure and use results to improve program effectiveness and efficiency and to make better resource allocation decisions. We do this by applying the theories and principles associated with the results-based management paradigm.

Results-based management is a high-level management philosophy encompassing:

• Setting of strategic objectives;
• Program design;
• Program implementation;
• Measurement and reporting, and;
• Program adjustment (re-setting strategic objectives using information).

Most of our work takes place at the measurement and reporting stage of this cycle, primarily through activities associated with performance measurement and program evaluation. We also work with clients at the strategic level, to use performance and evaluation information to examine and adjust strategic objectives.

Lotic Consulting is now also developing an innovative participatory approach to creating causal models for programs and policies. We are pioneering the application of cognitive mapping, fuzzy logic and graph theory to the areas of program theory and policy development. These techniques allow us to help clients produce qualitative causal models that are far superior to many of the standard program evaluation and policy modeling techniques currently in use.

Program Evaluation

Lotic Consulting provides extensive services in the area of program evaluation.

We help clients:

• Conduct program/policy assessments;
• Conduct evaluation planning exercises;
• Prepare program models/theories;
• Prepare evaluation frameworks, including key evaluation questions and indicators;
• Develop evaluation methods and data collection approaches (key informant interview approaches, literature reviews, case studies, surveys, focus groups);
• Test evaluation data collection tools;
• Collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative data;
• Prepare communication and dissemination products, including reports, presentations, briefings, lessons learned and best practices.

Performance Measurement

Lotic Consulting also provides our clients with the tools and advice necessary to design, implement and operate full performance measurement frameworks. Our services in this area include:

• Advice on building a results-oriented management culture;
• Review of existing and legacy monitoring systems;
• Logic modeling (including participatory approaches);
• Definition of all types of performance metrics, including indicators, targets and baselines;
• Data source review and identification;
• Information system needs analysis and design;
• Data and trend analysis, including statistical analysis;
• Creation of full performance measurement strategies and frameworks, including organizational considerations such as roles, responsibilities and reporting mechanisms.

Participatory (Stakeholder-driven) Program and Policy Models Using Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping

Lotic Consulting is currently developing a new and innovative approach to building causal models of programs and policies.

Knowing, causally, how a program or policy may work is important context for allocating resources in an informed manner and designing interventions that are effective. Indeed, much of the work in the area of program theory is concerned directly with developing models of how programs work.

However, this kind of modeling, to date, has been somewhat rudimentary, and where more sophisticated techniques have been applied, they tend to be heavily quantitative and require up front high resolution data (which are time consuming and expensive to obtain).

Lotic Consulting uses a technique that relies on cognitive mapping, fuzzy logic and graph theory to produce qualitative models of program and policy systems using the knowledge and understanding possessed by the stakeholders around the system in question. Fuzzy logic was developed specifically to model systems where up front data is scarce. This is ideal for modeling programs or policies where causal structures are unclear or poorly understood.

Lotic Consulting, with private sector and academic partners, is equipped to carry out the data collection, computational and reporting activities that are required to provide clients with deep insight into program or policy causal mechanisms. This further enables clients to make design, intervention and resource allocation decisions with levels of insight and understanding that have previously been difficult to obtain.

Some of the advantages of using fuzzy cognitive mapping to build program theory or to develop policy content include:

• Works well in data poor situations;
• Models perceptions and social ideas of how systems work;
• Permits the comparison of different understandings of how the system works among stakeholder groups;
• Easy to build;
• Can be based on anyone’s observations – does not require only expert knowledge;
• Good simulation of system under various scenarios;
• Provides good summary of relationships among variables, not quantitative predictions;
• Ideal for theory development, hypothesis formation, data evaluation.

Environmental Management

Lotic Consulting has over 20 years of experience in the environmental science and environmental management fields. Our areas of expertise include including environmental monitoring, environmental management systems (ISO 14,000), environmental auditing, ecosystem management, biodiversity issues, and climate change science.

Performance Auditing

Lotic Consulting also has experience in planning and conducting performance (non-financial) audits and verifications.