I don't think that programme evaluation is as central to the policy process as it should be. My sense is that we have a capacity and a capability problem, but I also sense that the professional culture and the political culture have not been conducive to the development and sustenance of an evaluation culture. Evaluation is threatening to those within politics and the public service who advance policies on the basis of great leaps of faith. It is a sad fact for some people that the world sometime acts in a counter-theoretical fashion. Programme evaluation is sometimes an unwelcome empirical antidote to those who build policy on heroic assumptions.
Policy making is, at best, a most uncertain science.
Even with the most robust and comprehensive systems of policymaking there will always be uncertainties weak links in the implementation chain, questionable assumptions about cause and effect, the mysteries of human behaviour. And policy made with the best of intentions sometimes doesn't work. Programme monitoring and programme evaluation should tell us what works, what doesn't, and why. The politician or public servant that finds that the outcomes he or she has promised are not eventuating may not welcome the evaluation report that brings these bad tidings. I am also of the view that programme evaluation can also pose a threat because it has the potential to democratise the policymaking process.