Evaluation in Partnership

Abstract

Co-funded policies are proliferating in the public sector, thus creating the need for evaluations in partnership. In this context, evaluation faces specific difficulties: objectives are multiple and ambiguous, indicators may not be perceived as relevant, data collection is complex, and partners' views legitimately differ. The article describes the evaluation of an urban development policy co-decided and co-funded by the French government and the Poitou-Charentes Region. It demonstrates that it was possible to overcome the difficulties of joint evaluations through a series of technical innovations: a concept map structured the evaluation; scoring sheets were used to construct qualitative impact indicators, data about impacts was collected via 20 case studies, and, finally, a multicriteria-multijudge analysis was used to conclude the evaluation while respecting different points of view. In addition to its operational interest, this experience seeks to make a theoretical contribution to the question of the final synthesis of evaluations.