Central government guidance seeks to ensure and enhance the quality of practice and decision-making across – and sometimes beyond – government. The Magenta Book, published by HM Treasury, is the key UK Government resource on policy evaluation, setting out central government guidance on how to evaluate policies, projects and programmes. The UK Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus was invited to contribute its expertise to the UK Government’s 2020 update of the Magenta Book by developing an accompanying guide on policy evaluation and ‘complexity’. A small multidisciplinary team worked together to produce a set of guidance, going through multiple stages of work and drawing on a variety of sources including academic and practitioner literature and experts and stakeholders in the fields of evaluation, policy and complexity. It also drew on Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus’ own work developing and testing evaluation methods for dealing with complexity in evaluation. The resulting Magenta Book 2020 Supplementary Guide: Handling Complexity in Policy Evaluation explores the implications of complexity for policy and evaluation and how evaluation can help to navigate complexity. This article, designed primarily for practitioners who might be interested in this guidance and how it was developed, describes the processes involved, particularly related to the interdisciplinary dialogue and consultation with other key stakeholders that this involved. It also briefly outlines the content and key messages in the guidance, with reflections on the experiences of the authors in developing the guide – including the challenges and insights that arose during the process, particularly around the challenges of communicating complexity to a broad audience of readers.

中文翻译：

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不要惊慌：将复杂性思维引入英国政府评估指南

中央政府的指导旨在确保和提高跨政府（有时是跨政府）的实践和决策质量。由 HM 财政部出版的 Magenta Book 是英国政府政策评估的重要资源，为中央政府如何评估政策、项目和计划提供指导。英国跨 Nexus 复杂性评估中心应邀通过制定政策评估和“复杂性”的随附指南，为英国政府 2020 年更新的洋红色书籍贡献其专业知识。一个小型的多学科团队合作制定了一套指南，经历了多个工作阶段，并借鉴了各种来源，包括评估、政策和复杂性领域的学术和从业者文献以及专家和利益相关者。它还借鉴了跨 Nexus 复杂性评估中心自己的工作，开发和测试评估方法以处理评估中的复杂性。由此产生的 Magenta Book 2020 补充指南：处理政策评估中的复杂性探讨了复杂性对政策和评估的影响，以及评估如何帮助驾驭复杂性。本文主要为可能对本指南及其制定方式感兴趣的从业者设计，描述了所涉及的过程，特别是与涉及的其他主要利益相关者的跨学科对话和协商相关的过程。它还简要概述了指南中的内容和关键信息，