La evaluación de lo público: prácticas y comunicación en las instituciones públicas costarricenses / Evaluation of public matters: practices and communication in Costa Rican public institutions

Abstract

The evaluation was not until a little more than two decades ago a relevant matter for public activity, concentrated in execution and guided by intuition, public approval or some data to record success in government work. This story has changed due to an increasingly demanding national and international context requiering transparency of public actions, efficiency in activities that each government in turn prioritizes, and of course, the effectiveness of what is proposed. The practice of evaluation in the Costa Rican state system is governed by an exhaustive normative and procedural framework. However, this platform has not necessarily ruled the execution of communication in the institutions. According to a study performed out in Costa Rican institutions between 2019-2020, first with a mapping of the communication units carried out with a survey (43) examining their operation, projects they execute and some evaluation practices they carry out; lack of rigorous evaluation practices were identified. Furthermore, these units there has no obligation to carry out operational planning of their annual activities, to apply systematic evaluations, nor are they obliged to prepare reports on the work carried out. Subsequently, an inquiry was conducted through interviews (22) with planning heads of the institutions and governing bodies to learn about the evaluation regulations, the formats and platforms used, inter-institutional link for evaluation and the scope of the mandatory nature of this function. The results suggest that the praxis of the units is dominated by the macro-institutional planning exercise that uses matrices and quantitative formats that record compliance but do not evaluate effects, changes, or impact of their activities, which reduces visibility of the public value provided by state sector, and to which is also added the work accomplish by the communication units. The true evaluation in the State is limited to a few government projects registered within the National Development Plan and not to a daily action in the entire state system. Some of the planning offices even indicate that neither planning, and even less evaluation, constitute a resource that is considered as strategic, conversely, they are seen more as an operational, compliance and organization resource, and for the different areas the filling of matrices and formats to record the execution of their tasks is an additional burden. In fact, one of the difficulties raised by these offices is the planning of their annual programs with objectives that can be evaluated, a position that is also recognized by the Contraloria General de la Republica (Comptroller General of the Republic), which indicates the absence, in a relevant percentage, of objectives in public institution programs. For the communication units, this set of practices produces inertia in the communicative action, little or no influence of the communication units in the institutional decision-making process, and an operational focus on execution, which reduces their strategic role. It is also clear that there is a predominance in the use of techniques and tools for reporting results in communication that does not correspond to evaluation, measurement is used with greater emphasis, and even in some cases the use of reportings which not apply to neither of the two processes.