The GUIDE has already painted an ambitious picture of what is expected of evaluation, how it should be organised and what it can deliver. In the previous section, for example, we provided guidance to administrations that commission or use evaluations as to how they might design and implement an evaluation. This assumed that requisite institutional and associated administrative capacities were available. For our purposes institutional capacity is defined broadly to include legal rules (e.g., regulating employment and procurement) normative assumptions (e.g., about equal opportunities or open competition), governance (e.g., democratic accountability and divisions of responsibility between tiers of government and civil society) as well as administrative and organisational arrangements (e.g., how ministries are structured and resourced). In this section of the GUIDE we are concerned with how to create such capacity so as to make practicable the ambitions for evaluation that can contribute to socio-economic development.
Capacity cannot be created overnight nor is it without costs. However, the potential benefits of evaluation are large enough to justify the initial investment and the recurrent costs needed to continuously innovate both in evaluation processes and products. It takes time to develop capacity and the necessary systems cannot be put in place at a single moment in time. They need longer-term nurturing to deliver sustainable benefits
Developing evaluation capacity has to be a shared concern of the wider policy community. Those responsible for policies and programmes must first be convinced of the need for evaluation. At the same time, even though their support is essential, they must not be allowed to capture the process. As has been emphasised many times in this GUIDE, independence is an essential ingredient of evaluation. To begin with this includes those who manage and commission evaluations, those who have an interest in evaluation results at a policy and programme level as well as those who undertake evaluations. However evaluation is not a stand-alone function: it requires an institutional framework and has to be embedded in institutional arrangements. In particular the capacity of public institutions to conduct evaluations is part of the wider requirements that the State must meet to address contemporary economic and social demands. Indeed, where evaluation capacity has been most developed is often in the very sectors that have conceived of it as an integral part of a much wider programme of public sector innovation and modernisation.
The need to build institutional and administrative capacity is a sometimes implicit but increasingly explicit transversal goal of socio-economic development policy. This goal in turn stems from two imperatives:
- To overcome the inefficiencies of the traditional public administrations by shifting towards a public management approach that draws on best management practice not only from the public sector but also taking on board lessons from the most successful private and non-profit organisations. Many of the assumed limitations to efficiency of public sector bodies are encapsulated in the so called New Public Management (NPM) movement which advocates reform, modernisation, decentralisation and privatisation among other solutions in the public sector. NPM aims to improve results, delivery and value for money.
- To overcome the perceived distance and separateness of public bodies from society as a whole, and therefore open up policy making to the contribution of external stakeholders, civil society representatives and citizens (the global drive towards democratic governance).
The diffusion of evaluation can contribute to both of these imperatives:
- First, the systematic identification of the best alternatives, as well as the careful consideration of the ability of ongoing, past and indeed future programmes to reach their objectives in an efficient way. This was identified in the previous section as an important contribution of evaluation, which can become a powerful tool for modernisation in the public sector, for cost reduction and for greater responsiveness to citizens.
- Second, the opening up of the administrative black box to the scrutiny of external stakeholders, as well as taking the interests of stakeholders and citizens into account (e.g., by including civil society groups in steering committees, consultations on evaluation findings and conclusions, etc.) is in itself an embodiment of the principles of democratic governance. Because the pledge to systematically evaluate public programmes can enhance the trust of citizens towards government, it contributes to the increase and maintenance of social capital. As contemporary theories of socio-economic development rest heavily on mobilising territorially-based (endogenous) resources and potential, such increases in social capital help to promote sustainable socio-economic development.