ECDC Virtual Academy (EVA)

The exercise was evaluated against the aim and objectives and is based upon the following:

• Outputs produced by the participants during the exercise: emails, press releases, decisions, taskings from meetings, situation reports, minutes of meetings and postings on the PHE intranet
• In addition, evidence was gathered from the following sources:

1. Participant workbooks – participants were provided with workbooks in order to allow them to evaluate for themselves how useful the tools and templates were; how clearly they understood their roles and responsibilities; and to identify areas for improvement
2. Participant feedback forms – feedback forms were included in the workbooks for individuals to provide their own personal feedback
3. Hot Debrief – at the end of the exercise, the functional groups were asked to nominate a spokesperson to feed back their key learning points and issues experienced during the exercise. In addition, the Director of ECDC also provided feedback from the experiences of the Senior Management Team
4. ECDC Evaluator – the Evaluator appointed by the ECDC Senior Management Team to perform the internal evaluation of the PHE response provided a report 
5. Public Health England Evaluators – an experienced team of evaluators from Public Health England attended the exercise and recorded their observations in a report 
6. Cold Debrief – in addition to the material and data collated from the day of the exercise itself, all participants were invited to attend the post-exercise workshop on 23 September 2013. This was held at ECDC and a programme for discussion of the feedback from the exercise was provided along with an opportunity to identify gaps and areas for improvement in the PHE response. The workshop was attended by 23 delegates and was divided into three sessions:

• First session: Evaluator feedback Feedback from observations of the exercise activity from the Public Health England evaluation team and from the ECDC Evaluator
• Second session: Group work Participants worked in their functional groups to consider their experiences during the exercise
• Third session: Group feedback Participants provided feedback in a plenary session on observations from the exercise activity, roles, tools and templates used, and agreed recommendations for enhanced PHE response arrangements and to address some of the challenges faced during the exercise.