Impact Evaluation

This week we will talk about the papers presented at the conference “Making Impact Evaluations of Social Programs Work”. A selection of the presented papers will be published in the journal edited by the CISS “Well-Being and Social Policy”.

Gonzalo Hernández, Director of CONEVAL (Consejo Nacional de Evaluación), through different cases of evaluations of social programs in Mexico, identifies the main lessons that this experience has left. First he defined that is fundamental to have well prepared evaluators and to secure financing for evaluation. In this regard, he emphasized the need to generate more human capital, which applies to almost all countries of the continent. Second, he mentioned that the best evaluations are those that are demanded by the operators of the programs, as administrators cooperate in a better way and the evaluations can be planned from the beginning, although he recognized that the disadvantage of making evaluations “on demand” is that only programs are evaluated when there is a ex ante suspicion that the program are delivering good results, rather than evaluating programs for which there is a ex ante suspicion that the program is not producing good results, but programs for which evaluations are more necessary. Third, he mentioned that the economic impact evaluation should be understood as a piece of an integral strategy of monitoring and evaluation and that to improve social programs is very important to generate all relevant information, from simple indicators to sophisticated evaluations. Finally, Dr. Hernández said that in the particular case of Mexico (although it applies to most countries) the public system of evaluation should evolve from evaluating specific programs to the evaluation of strategies or systems, such as health or pension systems.