About
Impact Intelligence Lab
Impact Intelligence Lab helps organisations understand, strengthen and use their evidence.
Impact Intelligence Lab (the Lab) is an evidence and evaluation practice for organisations that must explain outcomes, performance, and public value: councils, health networks, NGOs, funders, and commissioning teams. Evaluation is something we do. It is not what we are.
Four capabilities, one principle
The practice runs across four capabilities: Understand (evidence reviews, synthesis, evaluation, impact analysis), Measure (outcomes frameworks, KPIs, theory of change), Learn (gaps, patterns, what to examine next), and Use (reporting, decision support, evidence governance, and CIIS).
- Experience can be evidence.
- Lived Experience is expertise.
- Participation must carry influence.
Did people merely provide information, or could they influence what it meant and what happened next?
Evidence infrastructure
CIIS sits underneath the practice
CIIS (Collaborative Impact Intelligence System) is the evidence infrastructure the Lab builds and operates. It helps teams connect outcomes, measures, and evidence so reports can show what is safe to use, what remains limited, and what should not yet be relied on.
Depth and shipped surfaces vary by pilot and release. See current status.
What we hold the line on
- CIIS supports human judgement. It does not replace accountable leadership.
- We do not assert blanket legal compliance; posture depends on deployment and contract.
- Product views in marketing are synthetic unless stated otherwise.
How we think about the work
- Evidence should be clear, useful, and traceable, not buried in spreadsheets.
- Frameworks are reporting lenses, not substitutes for professional judgement.
- Transparency about limits builds more trust than polished certainty.
Founder
Alan McCarthy
Founder, Impact Intelligence Lab · Melbourne, Australia
Australian strategist and systems thinker. His work spans the places where outcomes claims meet real scrutiny: commissioning, governance, and program design for councils, health networks, NGOs, and community organisations.
That repeated gap between what good programs achieve and what reports can honestly say shaped CIIS: structure the evidence trail before the wording leaves the team. Over-claiming and under-claiming usually come from missing structure, not dishonesty.
Pilot work stays with the founding team and a small group of trusted collaborators across evaluation, technology, and public-sector strategy. The intelligence work is not handed off to junior pipelines or automated drafting.
Credibility in practice
- Public-sector commissioning and program oversight
- NGO and community-organisation governance
- Evidence-based program design for councils, health networks, and funders
- Systems thinking across reporting pressure, not slide-deck strategy alone
Lab founded in Australia. CIIS developed inside the practice, not as a separate SaaS pitch.
Australia-first context
Impact Intelligence Lab and CIIS are developed with Australian public and community-sector reporting realities in mind. Organisations elsewhere may still find the approach relevant; pilot and hosting details are agreed explicitly.
Quick answers
Short definitions for search and answer engines. Fuller detail is in the sections above.
- What is Impact Intelligence Lab?
- Impact Intelligence Lab is an Australia-based evidence and evaluation practice that helps organisations understand, strengthen and use their evidence. Work spans evaluation, measurement, learning, reporting, and evidence governance. CIIS is the evidence infrastructure the Lab builds and operates when continuous claim review is the right response.
- Where does Impact Intelligence Lab work?
- Impact Intelligence Lab is based in Melbourne, Australia (ABN 38 212 137 424), and works with councils, Primary Health Networks, NGOs, funders, and commissioning teams that must explain outcomes under scrutiny.
Discuss your evidence challenge
We will scope the session to your outcomes, evidence, and governance questions, and separate what is live today from pilot-scoped work.
Discuss your evidence challenge