Department of Political Economy:Evaluating Public Policy - Essay Example

Policy evaluation has an important role in public administration. In other words, it utilises a systematic social research procedure and methodology to assess and evaluate the conception, design, implementation and effectiveness of policies (Weiss, 1999). This makes it a scientific method of evaluating what was done and its impact. This gives room for undertaking remedial actions and corrective procedures where necessary in cases where there is going to be another phase of implementations. This ensures that mistakes are avoided and new things are integrated into the policy.

Essence of Policy Evaluation The main idea of policy evaluation is to improve the quality and integrity of an implemented policy. This implies that policy evaluation aims at adding up what is missing to a given policy to make it as useful as possible to the society. According to Nagel (1999), policy evaluation is to assist organisations and stakeholders to improve the way they view a given policy that has been instituted. In other words, policy evaluation enables the organisation tasked with the policy to improve their plans, policies and practices with the benefit of hindsight.

This is because policy evaluation assesses a given policy in light with new information after implementation and examine what needs to be changed and what needs to be maintained. The ultimate end is to provide the best possible results for stakeholders based on incremental information accrued in the process. Impact of Policy Evaluation In analysing the purpose of policy evaluation it will be worthwhile to examine the positive and negative effects of policy evaluation. This will give an exegesis of the actual role that policy evaluation plays in policy administration.

This approach is used in this essay because the impact or the role of public policy evaluation provides an understanding of the purpose of policy evaluation. Hence, the essay will discuss the positive impacts that policy evaluation makes on policy administration. The next part will involve an evaluation of the limitations of policy evaluation and how it could be abused in real life. Positive Effects of Policy Evaluation. Primarily, policy evaluation provides opportunities to check the impact of a given public policy that has been implemented (Rossi, Freeman, 1999).

This is usually done to estimate the effects of the policy on the society. This is necessary because policy evaluation allows the implementers to check the effects, efficiency and benefits of the public policy they have implemented. This will involve the collection of information relating to results of a given policy that has been implemented. These results are critiqued and checked with the plan or purpose for which the policy was implemented. This way, the implementers of the policy can match the results to the expectations.

Once this is done, variances could be identified and important trends can be examined. With knowledge of trends and results, there could be an observation of what the results have been and an objective assessment of the impact of the policy at hand. After that, the organizers of the policy implementation can integrate new ideas to ensure that the policy meets the best objective possible in the future. Secondly, public policy evaluation provides the opportunity for participation and the promotion of democracy (Frans-Bauke and Jurian 2006).

This is an important point