Program Evaluation

Program evaluation is the process governments use to find out whether the money, staff, and time put into a policy or service actually produce the results they were meant to. It sits alongside budgeting and oversight as one of the main tools for judging whether public programs deserve to continue, change, or end.

Planning before spending. Before a program launches, agencies often map out how it is supposed to work: what resources go in, what activities happen, and what changes are expected to follow. This kind of planning helps distinguish a program built on a clear, testable idea from one that simply sounds good, a distinction explored in How Government Plans: Logic Models vs. Theory of Change.

Judging what happened. Once a program is running, evaluators ask different questions depending on the timing: is it being carried out as intended, and is it actually achieving its goals? Those two angles, checking implementation along the way versus measuring final outcomes, are the subject of Understanding Government Program Evaluation: Your Guide to Formative and Summative Assessments.

Weighing effort against effect. Good evaluation separates the amount of activity a program generates from the actual difference it makes in people’s lives, and it also separates whether a policy is well designed from whether it was carried out competently, questions taken up in When Government Gets Results and Policy Analysis vs. Policy Evaluation: How Government Works.