America Living With AIDS

AM E R I C A Living With AIDS

state and local competence and were
able to assist state and local governments in evaluating and developing
policies and programs, in
training staff, and in
planning for future
often we needs. Support of this
s or cannot kind would require a subadequately stantial change in the way
needs in federal agencies do busiof gender ness-in effect, it would
c issues, require the creation of
exism, and field technical assistance
t yet have teams not tied to specific
voice of federal programs or fundare so ing streams.
neeting the A related but separate
at there is need exists for technical
ttention assistance and capacity
wn needs, building for community-?r and must based organizations.
mpromise Such assistance would
do without include financial manageport, basic ment, personnel recruitattention, ment and management,
ple things program planning, and
tp people evaluation systems, as
wholesome well as program and polihemselves. cy issues more directly
related to HIV prevention
E AU and treatment.
'I A fundamental and
persistent problem in the
development of policies
and programs at all levels
of government has been the lack of
adequate evaluation. Even now, a
decade into the epidemic, new programs continue to be introduced with
inadequate evaluation designs and
processes. Without such evaluations
the ability to discern useful strategies is
lost, and continued funding of effec
tive public programs may well be jeopardized through lack of supporting
data and documentation.
One critical factor contributing to
the failure to evaluate public programs
has been a marked degree of confusion about which level of government,
and which agency at each level, is
responsible for evaluation. Clear decisions are needed concerning which
agency requires the evaluation, which
provides technical assistance, who
funds it, and who ensures that it is
done and renders the results both
accessible and understandable. Outside observers often criticize program
administrators for failing to evaluate
their own programs when in fact
operating agencies rarely have the
funds or technical assistance required
to make such analyses. This could be
addressed by increased funding for
evaluation and by a concentrated federal effort to develop and provide
technical assistance in the specific area
of evaluation.
Often funds for technical assistance
and evaluation are included in administrative budgets for public programs.
This almost invariably results in inadequate support, both in absolute terms
and as a proportion of program funds.
Reasons given for this include legislative concern over the propriety of
large administrative budgets and limited support for appropriating money
to state and local government for evaluation and technical assistance. This
has been the case particularly when
federal dollars have been limited and

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