I am Dr (Mrs) Rooba Moorghen, former Hubert Humphrey Fellow, and former Permanent Secretary. As a government practitioner in Mauritius, I have acquired more than forty-five years of experience in public sector Management, Public Administration and Public Policy.
In the context of the 2023 American Evaluation Association (AEA) Conference valuing stories, I find it befitting to relate my story even a nascent one tracing my journey in evaluation especially within an enabling and enthusiastic bubbling community of evaluators I had the privilege to meet during the Conference.
My interest in evaluation sparked when I followed a course in Program Evaluation during my Humphrey year in 2005 /2006 at the University of Washington in Seattle and subsequently I joined the AEA in 2019.
My PhD research explores the opportunities and challenges surrounding the institutionalization of Impact Evaluation as a policy instrument in the Mauritius Civil Service. It examines the perceived importance of evaluation to the policy-making process within the Mauritian Civil Service and the challenges that present themselves while seeking to institutionalize evaluation.
Now that I have retired from the Service, I am using my expertise of public policy to integrate evaluation at different stages in the policy cycle for teaching and to develop manuals for university students and serving government officers.
Further, addressing the SDG Goals from a policy perspective can be very complex and calls for inner expertise on how institutional, regulatory, political and coalition framework operate within complex and competing systems of a welfare state, a Small Island Developing States and from a former colonial state.
Lessons Learned
Looking back on my research findings and in the light of recent readings and developments in the evaluation practice some of the lessons learned are as follows:
- Monitoring compliance with rules and regulations contribute to improvement of policies, programs especially with the Audit function as a rational tool that evaluative information improves organizational effectiveness.
- However, it is quite distinct from evaluation which enhances oversight and executive accountability as well as addressing contextual appropriateness to ensure equitable practices and resources as well as appropriateness of programs across diverse settings.
- Evaluation can be integrated at any stage of a policy’s life cycle and within the budget cycle for evidence-based policy- making.
- Evaluation is an effective instrument to promote better policy coherence accountability and good governance.
- Depending on context, a whole of government approach can be envisaged or sector-wise.
- Evaluation promotes Public Governance where formal and informal arrangements determine how public decisions are made and how publications are carried out , from the perspective of maintaining a country’s constitutional values in the face of changing problems, actors and environment, as stated in page 89 on Osborne’s book.
- Capacity building at all levels is critical.
Challenges Inhibiting Institutionalization of Evaluation
- Context matters and it is the overriding principle.
- Historical evolution of post colonialism of a country focuses on the development of a welfare state providing free health care, free education and free social services and concentrating on the welfare of the nation.
- Political Executive has a mandate of only five years to deliver their electoral manifesto; hence the political economy of a country is critical to deliver promises made to the population.
- Comfort zone of the Permanent Executive as represented by the mass of public officers for maintenance of prevailing practices and status quo.
Should evaluation remain a myth?
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