Deficit sau sfârșit de expertiză în planificarea și evaluarea programelor publice sociale?

Abstract

The paper is based on the observation of an unequal practice in Romania on how are designed and evaluated the public social programs aiming at supporting social disadvantaged groups, which implies a negative impact on the relevance and the efficiency of these programs. Although the evaluation culture was intensively promoted during Romania pre-accession to the EU, particularly during 2001 – 2006 (Toderaș & Iacob, 2020), the evaluation practice shows a significant decline in the area of public social programs, except those funded by external grants. Whether the ex-ante assessments are still done (although their quality largely vary due to the availability of the funds needed to conduct these evaluations), the ongoing or impact evaluations funded by the public authorities are almost inexistent. Most of the current public social programs (e.g. the supply of monetary benefits based on means-testing, the nutritional programs for schoolchildren, the public social assistance services) have not ever been evaluated or their evaluations were inconsistent or focused only on specific aspects. Two study cases will illustrate this process, respectively the minimum guaranteed income and the nutritional program for schoolchildren, both previously documented. The analysis will identify how the legislative process has impacted the running of these programs, and will look on the available assessments and studies related to these programs in order to identify the patterns of the assessments which feed the major decisions related to the social programs.