The State Legislature has both the authority and responsibility to assure that Michigan's government is managed efficiently and effectively and is accountable for achieving program purposes and objectives as outlined in enabling and authorizing legislation. Involvement in substantive legislative oversight activities will equip them with critical information for policy decision and will enable them to acquire expertise in state governmental affairs and policy. Systematic legislative oversight should involve both standing and appropriations committees, allow committee chairs and members to influence the objects of oversight, draw on available legislative staff resources, and utilize Auditor General audits. The common denominator is legislators asking program results-oriented questions. The focus of legislative oversight is to assess the outcomes of governmental services, not to emphasize the inputs, such as the numbers of staff, dollars spent, resources consumed, although these questions are important, too.
Program evaluation is but one of many tools of legislative oversight.
Other tools include performance audits, executive agency plans and testimony, budget studies and documentation, and special legislative staff studies. Patton emphasizes that evaluation ought to be useful to decision making and lead to program improvement. Program evaluation generally differs from traditional audit approaches as it focuses upon programs, not organizational units. As such, it views the program as a whole system, even if it cuts across agency lines. Program evaluation emphasizes measurement of outputs and impacts as well as inputs and processes.