Provisioning Information to Evaluate Public Policies: A Financial Inclusion Case

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the importance of providing information necessary for the evaluation of public policies during the formulation phase. These policies often can be reformulated or adapted during the deployment process, making it difficult to identify during the formulation phase what information is needed for evaluation. This difficulty is especially manifested when the state is the formulator and independent agents are deployers, such as the financial inclusion policy discussed in this paper. Like other Central Bank (CB) policies, the financial inclusion project was formulated internally in the BC and implemented directly by financial system agents. Given these characteristics, we investigate this project under light of theories that articulate formulation, implementation and evaluation of public policies. From this study we conclude that, despite the impossibility of making a full estimate of the required information in the formulation stage, there are gains for the evaluation process if it is inserted into the formulation/implementation dynamics of public policies.

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