Evaluating Social Protection Policies: Lessons from Brazil

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is considered a valuable mechanism for improving the quality of public policy and has become politically important for policymakers. However, few studies have covered the process of designing and implementing the administrative structures required for effective M&E. Pioneering approaches to evaluating social protection policies by Brazil's Secretariat of Evaluation and Information Management (SAGI) provide key lessons around effective M&E systems. These include the importance of timing evaluations so that they contribute to decision-making processes, ensuring qualified researchers both commission and conduct the evaluations, and developing a reporting system which both handles feedback sensitively and remains transparent about results. This IDS Policy Briefing was produced by the Rising Powers in International Development (RPID) programme and the Centre for Social Protection(CSP), based at IDS.