Spain is on the verge of passing new legislation on policy evaluation. The law is a condition of Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan for the use of Next Generation funds. The corresponding bill is currently in the amendment stage and needs to become law before the end of 2022. This represents a great opportunity to create the framework that will allow Spain to evaluate its policies and learn more about their impact - but the text is in need of improvement.
We have written more about this in an op-ed in the Spanish daily newspaper El País.
Our suggestions can be summarised as three main recommendations to the current text:
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Inclusion of more rigorous and new methodologies in policy evaluations. We propose the systematic introduction of impact indicators into the evaluation process, as well as the creation of a Policy Experimentation Unit which, as part of the new State Evaluation Agency, would be responsible for more rigorous, empirically based pilot projects.
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Addition of the right human and financial resources. To increase independence and ensure that officials are not just burdened with more work, we propose that the human resource standards be specified to make sure that qualified staff are doing the assessments, as well as the designation of an evaluation budget in every new law and programme.
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Design of incentives and mechanisms to ensure that evaluation results are included in the policy process. We propose the creation of a public and accessible Results Use Plan to increase transparency and accountability. Also, we recommend facilitating access to data for researchers and ensuring collaboration with academia and between state institutions.
An effective policy evaluation law would be a legal pioneer across the EU and globally and would help create much-needed evidence on the use of public funds. This is a tremendous opportunity to advance Spain’s public evaluation culture and foster evidence-informed policymaking across all sectors, and a necessary first step to implement more impactful programs. At IGL we are rooting for this culture of experimentation, evaluation and learning to become a reality soon.
Sara Garcia Arteagoitia
Sara García Arteagoitia joined IGL as a Senior Researcher in 2022. In her role, she helps identify experimental research opportunities with our global government partners and bring them to fruition.
Before joining IGL, Sara worked as a consultant and instructor in behavioural design with private companies and government agencies in Spain and Latin America, helping them improve their structures and programmes to achieve higher impact. Prior to that, she was the Senior Assistant Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago, where she worked on developing partnerships and research structures to propel and promulgate experimental behavioural research.
She started her career in experimental research as a research assistant for different projects at the University of Chicago and the Max-Planck Institute for Collective Goods. Sara holds a BA in Political Science and a MA in Political Psychology from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Hugo Cuello
Hugo is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).
Hugo has worked since 2018 in the intersection between the Research and the Policy teams at IGL, supporting policymakers in the early stages of policy development and helping them decide where to introduce experimentation to increase the impact of entrepreneurship and business support programmes. He leads successful projects and publications to promote experimentation and supports the design, implementation and evaluation of several government programmes across OECD countries.
Before joining Nesta, Hugo was a policy evaluation advisor for the Costa Rican government. He also evaluated employment and entrepreneurship programs for the German Development Agency (GIZ) in Central America and worked with various research institutes and consultancies in Europe and Southeast Asia. He holds a BA in Political Science and a Master of Public Policy (MPP) at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. In 2020, he was included in the Santander-CIDOB “35 under 35 List” for his leadership in policy innovation and transformation in Europe.
Edoardo Trimarchi
Edoardo Trimarchi is Policy Lead for the Innovation Growth Lab (IGL).
In this role, Edoardo contributes to the development and growth of IGL’s programme of work to create more experimental policy ecosystems.
Before joining IGL in 2022, Edoardo was the Senior Policy Manager of the Abdul Latif Jameel Policy Action Lab (J-PAL) office for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile. For three years he led J-PAL LAC’s policy team in identifying opportunities to promote the use of evidence in policy making, built partnerships with governments, donors and civil society organisations across the region, and provided technical assistance for the scale-up and replication of successful interventions. He joined J-PAL LAC in 2017 as a Senior Research Associate working on a White Paper on youth crime and violence prevention in Mexico. Previously, he worked in Colombia with J-PAL LAC and Innovations for Poverty Action on a project for the institutionalisation of evidence use within the Monitoring and Public Policy Evaluation Unit of Colombia's National Department of Planning.
Edoardo also conducted field research in Bolivia and Colombia, and interned at the Democratic Governance Unit of the United Nations Development Programme in the Dominican Republic. Edoardo has an MSc in Sustainable Development - International Development from Utrecht University and a BA in Economics from Bocconi University.