"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."  Milton Friedman, American Economist

Many Local Authority staff and practitioners bemoan the pace of change and the constant need to prove something works in the blink of an eye.

Many Politician’s and policy makers bemoan how their policy aims have not been achieved and there is little evidence to illuminate why things haven't changed in the way they were expected to.

Both groups are right but both groups are part of the problem.

We all believe we know better than the next person what will or will not work in a given situation but that means every filtration of a policy removes some elements of it so that by the time it is delivered to the end user it may only have a passing resemblance to what was originally intended.  However, this is a symptom of the bigger problem which is people have to find ways to best fit things in the time and resources they have and so usually resort to what they know best, that is what they have done previously.  The refrain that more of the same will get more of the same is forgotten. 

Most practitioners are better at doing than objectively evaluating to demonstrate what difference it made. Yet funding demands evaluation but what we get is "lip service" something is done to tick the box but it is usually very superficial and done resentfully at the end of the programme rather than as an integral part of the programme development and delivery.  Too many people assume evaluation is the Questionnaire and it is dependent on the participants being willing to fill them in but this is a very narrow approach.  What they have to say is vitally important but there are many ways this can be collected and supported by evaluation of other interested parties. At present we waste so much money on policy that never makes it to delivery, evaluation that is superficial and uninformative so we make judgements to continue or change on false information. This situation simply leads to more policy changes that aren't effectively implemented or tested out and still inadequate results for the money being spent.

The vast majority of those who work in the Public Sector have a real affinity to help others and I don't believe set out to waste money but the reality is that the constant manipulation of policy and funding intention is leading to constant wastage. 

The question is how we get ourselves out of the mess we are in...

Policy - should be delivered as close to how it was designed for a realistic period of time and the evaluation an integral part. Only then will we even begin to know if the intentions are delivering results.