ABOUT
Impact Intelligence Lab
Defensible impact reporting for social impact, and CIIS, our flagship platform.
Impact Intelligence Lab builds evidence-led systems for organisations that must explain outcomes, performance, and public value: councils, health networks, NGOs, funders, and commissioning teams.
CIIS as flagship product
Our flagship product, CIIS (Collaborative Impact Intelligence System), 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.
CIIS is being developed to help organisations reuse structured impact information across reporting contexts, while keeping statements tied to evidence, review, and limitations - not "enter once and view through any framework" as a mature, fully automated suite. 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.
Impact Intelligence Lab vs Impact Intelligence
Impact Intelligence Lab (this site, impactintelligencelab.com) builds CIIS for program evidence, claim review, and defensible reporting to boards, funders, and public-purpose stakeholders.
Impact Intelligence (impactintel.com) is a separate consultancy focused on large-scale unstructured data analytics for global institutions — for example strategic intelligence engagements with UNDP, the World Economic Forum, and foundations. That work is not described on this site; see impactintel.com for case studies in that space.
Who is behind the Lab
Impact Intelligence Lab was founded by Alan McCarthy, an Australian strategist and systems thinker with a background spanning public-sector commissioning, NGO governance, and evidence-based program design. Alan has worked with councils, health networks, and community organisations on outcomes measurement, reporting accountability, and evidence-led decision-making.
CIIS emerged from a repeated observation: organisations doing genuinely good work were routinely over-claiming or under-claiming in their reporting — not from dishonesty, but because no structured tool existed to connect evidence to statements before they left the team. The Lab was built to fix that gap.
We work with a small group of trusted collaborators across evaluation, technology, and public-sector strategy. All pilot work is conducted with direct involvement from the founding team; we do not outsource the intelligence work to junior staff or automated pipelines.
Australia-first context
The 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.
Test your weakest claim
We will scope the session to your outcomes, evidence, and governance questions - and separate what is live today from pilot-scoped work.
Test your weakest claim