| Session Title: Evaluation Policy: Integrating Evaluation Offices into the Surrounding Agency Culture |
| Expert Lecture Session 560 to be held in Centennial Section C on Friday, Nov 7, 10:55 AM to 11:40 AM |
| Sponsored by the Presidential Strand |
| Chair(s): |
| Melvin Mark, Pennsylvania State University, m5m@psu.edu |
| Presenter(s): |
| Eleanor Chelimsky, Independent Consultant, oandecleveland@aol.com |
| Abstract: Most discussions of evaluation policy focus on the substance and process of doing evaluations. This presentation focuses instead on another important aspect of evaluation policy: The organizational and structural considerations that facilitate doing needed studies, keeping them independent and credible, insuring their usefulness, and getting them disseminated. I examine three kinds of problems: first, problems typically encountered in achieving acceptance of evaluation and evaluators within agencies (e.g., clashes of professional cultures); second, challenges of organizing for use (especially, but not only, difficulties related to incompatible interests of different users); third, the independence and credibility of the evaluation product and the protections needed to maintain the evaluators' findings and the office's reputation. I argue that evaluation's failures can be traced directly to our naiveté about power relationships in government and to the difficulty of protecting evaluative independence in the face of political pressures. Good evaluation policy needs to avoid these failures. |