General surveillance programs are essential initiatives that rely on people from all walks of life to detect and report pests, weeds, and diseases. The ABARES Social Science Program has been developing a practical manual to guide the design, monitoring, and evaluation of these programs. The manual supports program managers and staff to strengthen program performance, apply adaptive management and continuous improvement, and demonstrate the value of general surveillance for biosecurity decision making.
The manual presents an integrated framework for program design and continual improvement that combines systems thinking with the Measurement, Evaluation, Reporting and Improvement (MERI) approach often used by community-based natural resource management groups.
Five general surveillance programs across the animal, environmental, marine, and plant sectors have trialed the first draft of the manual as part of designing their programs. Their feedback is helping to refine the manual to provide a practical, user friendly set of steps to help ensure programs are designed and managed to be fit for purpose, efficient, and effective.
The manual will help program managers and other stakeholders to plan more effectively, understand the impact of their programs, and communicate those outcomes with confidence.
It builds on earlier guidance developed for implementing general surveillance programs, Making General Surveillance Work, which captured lessons learned from nine case studies across Australia and New Zealand.
The final version of the manual will be available on the ABARES website in July 2026.
