The article under analysis is titled Impact Evaluation and Public Sector Programs in India: What Can We Do Right Now? written by Elizabeth Mathew and Joanne Sprague. The Indian government has allocated money to the projects concerning the improvement of the current situation in India. Although excessive amounts of money have been spent the level of poverty has not been lowered. In such cases, there is the question about the effectiveness of these projects. These projects should be evaluated before their realizations. This article is devoted to the effectiveness of social programs that depend on ways of their evaluation.
The author aims at providing ‘an ideal model’ for public sector impact evaluations researching development evaluation literature. Further on, the author provides a list of steps to improve evaluations in the current situation. He mainly focuses on the evaluation system requiring improved technical capacity, broad institutional reform, and political will. The author provides the experiment that testifies to the effectiveness of the steps for improvement of the evaluation system described in his work.
Researching the cases of evaluation programs of India, the author provides the main steps of the improvement of its process. These steps are the development of a theory of impact for the scheme; identification of a standard set of indicators for outcomes and impacts; specification of data sources and baselines for measuring outcomes and impacts; use of a comparison or control group and mixed methods in data collection. Elizabeth Mathew provides the effectiveness of these steps on the example of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) project aimed at constructing a 37 million kilometers road. The author demonstrates the effective scheme of evaluation with the help of particular examples. Nevertheless, she points out that impact evaluation is quite a complicated task for India as far as it depends on not only governmental structures and political will but on the inherent difficulties of measuring development results and controlling them (Rossi, Lipsey & Freeman, 2004). The development of impact evaluation is very important for India as far as it increases the effectiveness of its projects and saves a lot of money (Gertler, Martinez, Premand, Rawlings & Vermeersch, 2011). The impact evaluation is directed at the results.
This scheme for the improvement of impact evaluation provided in this article does not solve the problem completely. It just provides some steps to improve its effectiveness. The case of PMGSY is used to demonstrate the use of these steps in practice that makes it easy to understand what the author is driving at. These steps may be used by government officials as well as by evaluators. Impact evaluation may prevent stakeholders and funders from unprofitable projects (Outline of Principles of Impact Evaluation, n.d.).
India is not a rich country, and the problem of poverty should be solved. The country where money should be spent with the results impact evaluation plays a very important role. This process helps to invest money in the most effective projects. The steps provided in the article should be considered not only by the Indian government. Nevertheless, it should be noted that nobody is insured from some failures and not all results may be predicted. The results of this research are relevant in a Public Administration setting but they may not be used in every area of our life as far as the projects concerning health or education are quite complicated to be evaluated according to the described steps.
Reference List
Gertler, P., Martinez, S., Premand, P., Rawlings, L. & Vermeersch, C. (2011). Impact Evaluation in Practice. Web.
Outline of Principles of Impact Evaluation (n.d.). Web.
Rossi, P., Lipsey, M. & Freeman, E. (2004). Evaluation a systematic approach. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.