Trends in Evaluation

This article appeared in the GAO Review, Vol. 15, Issue 3, Summer 1980. There are many current signs that evaluation is being institutionalized in all branches of the government. Similar developments are taking place in other countries. The Government of Canada has established a new office which is a source of evaluation guidance for the various departments. Congress is continuing to move toward enactment of oversight reform measures covering operating programs and regulatory functions of the Federal Government. These measures will require that the various congressional committees establish oversight review plans, leading to a more systematic basis for evaluations to support these oversight reviews. Congressional support agencies, such as GAO, will be directly involved in performing these evaluations and in assisting the committees, on request, with their evaluation and review plans. GAO personnel have met on a number of occasions with personnel of the Canadian Auditor General's Office and the Canadian Comptroller General's Office for an exchange of views on evaluation methods, evaluation training, and the use of evaluation. GAO has been visited by a number of representatives of other foreign governments interested in learning about the development of evaluation methods. A common concern among all of these countries is finding ways to measure the effectiveness of various public programs, and providing information to decisionmakers. The United Nations Joint Inspection Unit has developed a draft "Initial Guidelines for Internal Evaluation Systems of the United Nations Organizations." The Judicial Branch of the U.S. Government is also using evaluation and finding special uses for evaluation methods. The annual program of the Evaluation Research Society will include sessions on courts' use of evaluation methods, as well as the conduct of evaluation, evaluation training, legislative use of evaluation, and accountability of Federal and State agencies.