Federal Program Evaluations

Contains an inventory of evaluation reports produced by and for selected Federal agencies, including GAO evaluation reports that relate to the programs of those agencies.

In October 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a 1-day public workshop on Principles and Practices for Federal Program Evaluation. The workshop was organized to consider ways to bolster the integrity and protect the objectivity of the evaluation function in federal agenciesâ€"a process that is essential for evidence-based policy making. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

Public managers, contractors, and grantees conducting evaluations for government operate in complex environment where policymakers and commissioners of evaluation expect different types of “evidence” and simultaneously employ different criteria in judging the quality of that evidence. This text provides a road map for evaluators doing business within or for government, and public managers who are expected to assess and use evidence generated by a large variety of evaluation approaches. The book provides checklists and how-to guidance to help students and other readers develop skills in important activities such as: assessing the quality of evidence claims; developing theories of change to guide the design and evaluation of programs and policies; developing learning agendas to bridge the gap between evidence producers and potential evidence users; and increasing the support of public leaders and executives in the generation and use of evidence to inform their decision-making. The authors include end-of-chapter exercises for readers to test their ability to apply the skills described.

This book appears at an opportune time in the history of evaluation. Its detailed and up-to-date account of the organization and use of evaluation in eight Western, democratic countries--Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, United States, Denmark, Holland, Norway, and Switzerland--shows how evaluation functions at different levels of development. Focusing on the national or federal level of government, this volume presents a systematic and comparative view of eight nations at different stages of the development, institutionalization, and utilization of evaluations. All of these original contributions have been written by academics and government officials involved in the production and use of evaluation findings. Each shows how their respective country has moved to institutionalize evaluation at the federal level, and each explores the reasons for that institutionalization. Among them are managerial accountability, the increased complexity of the decisions facing policymakers, federally sponsored social change that needs to be tracked and assessed, and the increasing recognition that political power comes to those who possess such information. Program Evaluation and the Management of Government is tightly integrated. The contributions share coherence, a common analytic framework and use of key terms, resulting from the authors' three-year dialogue as members of the Working Group on Policy and Program Evaluation sponsored by the International Institute for Administrative Sciences located in Belgium. Their shared commitment to working together has given us the first systematic effort to assess evaluation across such a large number of countries. It will be of interest to applied social scientists and policymakers, especially those interested in comparative research.

The regulation of potentially hazardous substances has become a controversial issue. This volume evaluates past efforts to develop and use risk assessment guidelines, reviews the experience of regulatory agencies with different administrative arrangements for risk assessment, and evaluates various proposals to modify procedures. The book's conclusions and recommendations can be applied across the entire field of environmental health.