Methodological issues of evaluating effectiveness of state programs

Abstract

Despite the fact that state programs have been used for several years both at the federal and at the regional level, no harmonized approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of these programs have been developed to-date, both in terms of the criteria to be used and in terms of interpretation of such criteria during the evaluation. The article reviews different methodic approaches to evaluating state programs performance used both at the federal level and in the Russian regions and identifies the key advantages and shortcomings as well as contradictions in these approaches. The article demonstrates how various criteria impact the results of evaluation and how these criteria may distort the incentives to raising public administration performance. Based on the analysis, the author concludes that there is a need to develop common methodic approaches to evaluating state programs performance. The author proposes to use three independent criteria as a basis for such approach: state programs effectiveness; the extent of implementation of the program activities (achievement of outputs); and risk level of program implementation. Comprehensive analysis of these criteria would provide an objective evaluation of program performance and would support taking adequate management decisions based on this evaluation.