Rethinking the Management of Information in the Strategic Monitoring of Public Policies by Agencies

Abstract

The 2001 reform of the France basic law on financial legislation defines a new framework for the monitoring of public policies based on the evaluation of outputs and outcomes rather than resources allocations through a classical budgeting process. A new monitoring process is under design, based on the balanced scorecard method, aiming at achieving consistency between three levels: policy formulation, policy implementation and policy evaluation. The reliability of these processes depends on the management of flows of strategic information. According to the double-loop organizational learning theory (Argyris & Schon, 1978), the single loop learning deals with the management of the policy by the agency and answers the question Are things getting done right and delivering the expected outputs?. The double loop learning deals with the gap between outputs and outcomes and answers the question Are we doing the right things?, implying the revision of the governing variables themselves. Informations flows and measurement systems are in those cases very different. The paper is based on a survey carried out within the French administration in 2001 on the management of public policies by agencies. Comparing the current perspectives with the state of the art, analyzing case studies, the paper draws the future directions for the management of information in the strategic management of public policies and agencies.