The text on this page was automatically translated and hence may differ from the original. No rights can be derived from this translation.
The performance of government institutions is increasingly coming into focus, both from policy practice and policy science as well as from society. That is one of the reasons why governments are evaluating policies more frequently. In recent years, Dialogic has conducted a number of policy and program evaluations, including the national antenna policy, Kenniswijk, WBSO, and ICT policy for SMEs. Frank Bongers and Pim den Hertog recently authored an article in the journal Bestuurswetenschappen (volume 61, no. 3) on the strategic and methodological challenges in policy evaluations. They consolidate practical experiences and compare them to the theoretical insights on evaluations.
The thesis presented in this article is that policy evaluations often still rely on linear policy processes and therefore do not adequately account for the increasingly complex policy practice. Involved parties, for instance, have diverse expectations regarding the implemented policies, use different yardsticks to evaluate a policy, and can play various roles in a policy evaluation. We believe that the evolving policy practice necessitates a renewal of methods for evaluation research. You can request the article from one of the authors Frank Bongers or Pim den Hertog.