Evaluating the experience with program analysis and evaluation: building national capacity for improved public policy and administration

Abstract

This paper is an examination of the use of evaluation research and policy analysis information in governing, and particularly of the capacities that are needed to generate, sustain, and make use of this information. The paper discusses different forms of evaluation research and policy analysis and ways they are valuable for governing, the infrastructure needed to sustain a healthy program of evaluation and policy analysis, and the role that universities, public and private, and associations, such as the Latin American Centre for Development Administration (CLAD) and the emerging InterAmerican Network of Public Administration Education (INPAE), can play in developing and sustaining capacity for such research.

It takes more then research design and project administrators to support an overall system of program analysis and evaluation. Appropriate conditions to sustain capacity for program analysis and evaluation call for adequate resources, comprehensively trained researchers, rich sources of data, networks for peer review and professional training, and open publication of research findings and opportunities for replication. The institutions and the scholarly culture that generate these conditions take sustained cultivation, and a long time.

No single institution can develop and sustain a system of program analysis and evaluation alone. In addition to the important roles called for by government and by other funders in this regard, there are in particular very important roles for academic institutions and for academic and development associations, such as CLAD and INPAE, to advance and sustain this capacity.