Relationships between Evaluation of Policies and Quality of Services

This article attempts to show that in Latin America, as in the rest of the world, “quality” and “evaluation” are themes that have developed almost independently. Furthermore, the paper argues that there are important relations between these two themes and it shows ways in which evaluation and quality can be linked and thus mutually benefit. The main conclusions are summarized in the following paragraphs.

For a long time, the evaluation of public policies and the quality of services have been parallel practices and disciplines, with very few or no links whatsoever. Evaluators and quality experts have been operating in different worlds, forming separated “communities of practice”. This way, those that work in the evaluation field very seldom know or are aware of what quality experts do, and viceversa, despite the complementarities between these perspectives. This leads to a waste of potentially valuable synergies, that could enrich the value of the work of evaluators and quality experts. Evaluation and quality improvement associations operate practically without contacts among them, like parallel words, even though their scope and procedures are not completely different. Thus, it is infrequent that evaluators participate in meetings of quality experts and viceversa. These are independent communities of practice.

The document points out that the recent trend to privilege public management results has led evaluators to frequently neglect or undervalue the importance of processes. However, given the difficulties of attributing results to specific policies and programs, due to the fact that these interventions take place in an open and complex context in which exogenous factors intervene (and, in some cases, also other policies or programs), it is convenient to take into account the processes connected with interventions, as they may contribute to clarify attribution. Therefore, process evaluations may complement results evaluations, and this is being one of the key potential links between evaluation and quality.

On the other hand, the research concludes that evaluation techniques and perspectives can enrich the work of quality experts, as it allows for a more elaborate approach to the causal relations that link processes or “facilitating agencies” with results, and the consideration of contextual or external factors, given that quality schemes generally do not take them sufficient into account and they could be critical to determine the extent to which “facilitating agencies and/or processes” were instrumental in achieving results.

Finally, the paper argues that evaluation and quality are complementary perspectives that can mutually reinforce each other, benefitting from the stock of techniques and approaches developed in parallel and that have an important potential to improve both the practice of evaluators and that of quality experts, leading to public policies and services that would contribute in a better and greater extent to citizens’ welfare.

Key words: Public Policy; Policies Evaluation; Result Appraisal; Public Services; Quality