Evaluation of the National Cohesion Strategy. What can we learn from evaluation recommendations?
Evaluation of the National Cohesion Strategy. What can we learn from evaluation recommendations?

Summary/Abstract: Evaluation systems are important parts of public policy information feedback loop mechanisms. Evaluation studies gather a bulk of knowledge that may be used in improving public interventions. Recommendations formulated on the basis of evaluation studies play an important, but often neglected role in policy advice. As such, the quality of recommendations and mechanisms of their implementation become essential challenges for the evaluation system designers, evaluators, administrators and policy makers. The goal of the paper is to discover the key deficiencies of programs conducted within the National Cohesion Strategy (NCS) in Poland. The paper presents results of the study of 664 recommendations included in 56 evaluation studies. The study revealed a considerable inconsistency between the identified problems (mostly referred to deficiencies in program design) and proposed interventions that emphasized the changes in program management. The study also indicated that some evaluators had a little interest in future fate of the interventions, developing their recommendations not attaching enough importance to specifity of recommendations and their future implementation.

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