Designing the Evaluation System of Public Policies in the Islamic Republic of Iran

Taking advantage of the institutional approach, the present article tries to design and propose an evaluation system of public policies in Iran. Considering the distribution of evaluation roles in various institutions and the necessity of a systematic view for the integrity of evaluative activities, the article formulates an institutional model as a conceptual basis in designing the evaluation system of policy. Then, it prescribes appropriate methods and models for each institution and determines roles and responsibilities of the evaluation system accordingly. The institutional model is a multi-approach and multi-methodological model and holds the four factors i.e. evaluation goal, legal duties, policy area and organizational features as the criteria to select the evaluation model. Thus, in the proposed evaluation system of policy, 1) the Vice-Presidential Office for Planning and Strategic Supervision uses the analytical models of management information system, accountability emphasizing result-oriented payment and social system audit, 2) the Majlis Research Center uses cost-benefit, decision-theoretic, goal-oriented, test and case research, 3) the Supreme Audit Court uses the analytic model of cost-benefit and 4) the Expediency Council uses the legal monitoring, criticism and expertise model to fulfill their duties. Also, the need to have a feedback from non-governmental sources and the necessity to fortify private institutes in order to have independent and general evaluations are taken into account. In such system, the Expediency Council is the custodian to evaluate public policies, Vice-Presidential Office for Planning and Strategic Supervision is the custodian for executive and operational policies and the Majlis sponsors to evaluate the legislative policies.