About
About Impact Intelligence Lab
Impact Intelligence Lab is an evaluation and evidence practice for organisations that have to explain outcomes and public value. Evaluation is core to the work, alongside facilitation, evidence design, interpretation, reporting and advice.
Founder
Alan McCarthy
Founder, Impact Intelligence Lab · Melbourne
Alan McCarthy is the founder of Impact Intelligence Lab. He brings close to 20 years of experience across community mental health, youth services, primary health commissioning and local government, spanning frontline delivery, programme leadership, commissioning support, provider performance, evaluation, evidence design, outcomes reporting and advisory work.
He established and evaluated a youth outreach programme that delivered more than 1,000 occasions of service in its first year. He has supported commissioning, provider performance and outcomes reporting across six headspace services within a primary health portfolio, and has led national training and a whole-of-community youth needs assessment.
Across that work he saw the same gap. Good programmes couldn't honestly say what they'd achieved, and weaker ones said too much. The cause was rarely dishonesty. It was missing structure between the evidence and the words.
IIL exists to close that gap through evaluation, facilitation and advice. CIIS grew out of the same work, to keep the evidence trail attached before the wording leaves the team. The judgement stays with people: what counts as evidence, whose experience shapes the reading, and what gets said in public.
Pilot work stays with Alan and a small group of trusted collaborators across evaluation, technology and public-sector strategy. The Lab is based in Melbourne and built around Australian public and community-sector reporting.
Experience
- Community mental health and youth services
- Primary health commissioning and provider performance
- Evaluation, outcomes and reporting
- Programme leadership and capability building
- Local government and community needs assessment
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.
Evidence infrastructure
CIIS sits underneath the practice
CIIS (Collaborative Impact Intelligence System) is evidence infrastructure used inside some IIL engagements. Access is facilitated and restricted. The dated public capability boundary is maintained on one page.
Quick answers
- What is Impact Intelligence Lab?
- Impact Intelligence Lab is a Melbourne-based evaluation, evidence-governance and advisory practice that helps organisations understand, strengthen and use their evidence. Work spans evaluation, facilitation, measurement, learning, reporting, Lived Experience-informed practice and evidence governance. CIIS is evidence infrastructure used inside some engagements when that infrastructure is appropriate.
- 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'll shape the session around your outcomes, evidence, and governance questions.
Discuss your evidence challenge