Investigator(s): Professor Valerie Cooms, A/Professor Deirdre Howard-Wagner, Dr Francis Markham, Dr Mandy Yap, Dr Janet Hunt, Dr Yonatan Dinku and Dr Annick Thomassin

Administering institution: Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU

External Funding: Aboriginal Affairs New South Wales, 2020-2023 ($1,343,499)

Overview: CAEPR was commissioned by Aboriginal Affairs NSW to conduct a four-year evaluation of Local Decision Making (LDM). LDM is an initiative under the NSW Government’s Opportunity, Choice, Healing, Responsibility, Empowerment (OCHRE) Plan for Aboriginal affairs in New South Wales and has been in operation since 2013. This evaluation builds on the work of a previous evaluation (Stage 1), which focused on the first years of OCHRE and was led by researchers at the University of NSW between 2016 and 2018. This evaluation (Stage 2) focuses solely on LDM across five NSW regions, represented by five Aboriginal Regional Alliances, and at a state level with the NSW Coalition of Aboriginal Regional Alliances (NCARA). This co-designed, participatory evaluation is guided by two main goals: to improve the effectiveness of LDM in the context of other state and national-level agendas, and to improve Accord-making processes between Aboriginal Regional Alliances, NCARA and the NSW Government.