POLI 2070
10/2/13
Evaluation & Policy Change
• Intro
o Final stage in policy process—access the results of policy choices (is it
working, how is it working)
o Process of evaluation: catalog goals, measure degree of goal
achievement & access ways to make goal achievement more successful
o Change can cause even bigger conflict (making evaluation difficult)
particularly if the agency’s existence is threatened
o Problems w/ change that the agency wants to make to improve generally
occur b/c of congressional rulemaking & client issues
o Evaluation becomes particularly important in times of economic stress
when program viability is essential to its continued existence
• Problems in evaluation public policy
o Goal specification & goal change
▪ Vague language in legislation may make identifying goals
difficult; identified goals may be impossible or contradictory
▪ A program may modify its initial goals when the program becomes
operational (change to meet the needs of the environment or
regulatory bodies can be captures or employees may displace goals
or goals shift to survival)
▪ Some goals are not practical
▪ To counterpart goal displacement & other problems, programs
have been introduce that provide management & lower levels to be
rewarded or punished based on performance & for citizens to be
aware of performance
▪ Gov’ts might attempt to manipulate the #s to give the appearance
that goals are reached
▪ Different groups may have multiple constituencies w/ different
goals
o Measurement
▪ Creating a measure to evaluate goal achievement is often difficult
▪ Activity measures are often substituted as output
evaluation/measured
▪ Lack of availability to measure goal achievement may be
interpreted as ineffectiveness
▪ Measurement/performance indicator is difficult if the ultimate goal
is long term improvement & quick measurement cannot deem the
positive effects durable
▪ Programs that are able to be adopted generally favor short over
long term success
▪ Some programs are difficult to isolate the effects if several
programs interact in a population