RE: Recurring errors in public policies and major projects: contributions and solutions from evaluation | Eval Forward

Hello everyone,

First of all, a big thank you to Hynda who puts on the table a well relevant topic of debate that we must all bring answers to without taboos in order to put at the center evaluation compared to many related considerations about development work in every possible sense of the term “development”.  

In her message, Hynda highlights the term "mistake" as it is perceived by many of us in everyday life. However, we should place this term in the context of public policy planning in order to distinguish the intentional and the unintentional error in planning in our countries and in public policies more specifically. Then, Oumar tries to bring some snatches of answer but ends up very quickly pouring into the normative instead of staying in the real - what is done and why.

For my part, given my modest experience in administration and my modest research to understand how what I will call the "development theater" works, I caricature the sphere of development by the existence of different roles played by different actors and therefore the presence of different rationalities.

I would like to say at the outset that there is no pure naïve person who believes that development is an apolitical work that obeys exclusively to technical considerations. So when we talk about error in this context, we must talk about these unintentional errors that we could identify in our evaluation of public policies and it is also necessary that evaluation appreciates how and in what knowledge context these policies were formulated. This is where evaluation can become an interesting instrument to show us that the mistakes that we can identify through our evaluations are far from being unintentional. Indeed, such errors are strongly related to the balance of power that exists in the "theater of development" when planning a public policy. Here I agree with Oumar who admits that we have not done a lot of evaluations in our countries and that even when sometimes they are done, they are rather done as part of a "ballet folklore "- very often "imposed" by foreign donors.

And since these evaluations are done in the context of development programs and projects, the repercussions in the sphere of public policy planning remain limited, if not none, and the results of these evaluations are never seen as tools to help decision-making. It is important to recognize the separation in some of our countries between programs and development projects financed by foreign donors and public policies funded through public budgets and therefore most often fall within the domain of national sovereignty.

This is not to say that there are no other mistakes in public policy planning, such as lack of scientific and technical knowledge to develop a coherent public policy with relevant objectives and realistic outcomes. Mistakes that can come from a real lack of knowledge (either proven skills, reliable statistics, etc.) can come from other causes related to the famous "balance of power" mentioned above and this brings us back to the need to distinguish the intentional from the unintentional in our planning mistakes.

There are errors related to the existence of a "one and only" document that allows any reader to understand the public policy that some senior sector official talks about. I have personally experienced many examples of senior sectoral officials who spoke of a sectoral policy that existed only in their "head".

There are also errors related to the setting of objectives and results that are relevant and clear, evaluable, etc. As a Results-Based Management Specialist, I know something about the resistance some high level officials have and their need to avoid this kind of debate in the public policy planning document, when it exists and is made public. This makes things more difficult when talking about "accountability" of decision-makers in terms of achieving the objectives.

Other types of errors can be identified with respect to the allocation of resources for public policy and the logical links of allocated resources to the objectives and results assigned to the public policy.

Finally, there is another type of mistake that relates to "changeability" of the public policy. In a number of sectors, public policy is launched on the basis of ideas that are still insufficiently identified or apprehended and that sector policy officers are eager to implement in the field; then as the feedback (inconsistency protest, etc.) comes back from the field, public officers improve the "content" of the policy and this is done recurrently throughout the life of the policy, which makes it difficult to evaluate.

All this to say that the problem is not in public policy or its evaluation.

It is only fair that under such circumstances, the evaluation of a public policy elaborated in an administrative "straitjacket" devoid of logic and without knowledge is not possible and will have no conclusive result on the improvement of the development work ... It can only be used to tell the sectoral politician what he likes to hear, and this is not the role of evaluation and what is done in the advanced world.

Yours truly

Mustapha

 

Mustapha Malki, PhD

535 avenue Ampere #5

Laval, QC, Canada