Evaluation of public policies and projects
Context
To evaluate public policy is to judge its value against a set of criteria, with a view to improving it and providing information for decision-making. The evaluation of public policies (EPP) not only responds to a budgetary imperative, it also allows, above all, improving the effectiveness of public action. This practice has been promoted for more than 20 years in France and internationally, especially by the United Nations, the OECD or the European Union.
Many governmental agencies (AFD, GIZ, etc.) that participate in the Official Development Assistance (ODA) also use the EPP to evaluate the effects of their action in the water sector, learn strategic and operational lessons and specify their positioning in relation to the changing needs of the beneficiaries.
A public policy evaluation is based on analytical techniques (statistics, econometrics, data sciences, costs, impacts, leverage effect...), surveys (interviews, field trips...) and consultation (questionnaires, surveys, focus group...). Each public policy is studied through a set of standard evaluation criteria, including: effectiveness, efficiency, consistency, usefulness, relevance.
Source: www.modernisation.gouv.fr
Who are the stakeholders involved?
Users and beneficiaries are necessarily consulted, particularly on their expectations of the policy being evaluated. The main public stakeholders concerned (State, local authorities, social organizations, operators, etc.) are involved in the process, in order to build a collective vision of the challenges, objectives, results and ways of implementing each policy.
Evaluation reports are intended to be made public and citizens to be informed about the progress made in the process.
What is IOWater doing?
Over the past 25 years, IOWater has been supporting water management institutions worldwide, whether at the operational, decision-making, national, regional or transboundary level.
It is a unique protagonist for dialogue with ODA recipients, with expertise in all aspects of continental water resources management (water and sanitation utilities, IWRM, agricultural water...), constantly tested by reality in the field.
As such, IOWater participates in many international and French regroupings responsible for the evaluation of multi-year sectoral action plans (irrigation, urban water) or of organizational reform of the water sector for donors, of shared water resources management (transboundary, aquifer...) for international institutions, of decentralized cooperation projects for French local authorities or the public policies for requesting countries.