Evaluating Large Scale Welfare Reforms - an analysis of the evaluation of the NAV-reform in Norway

As member of a Scandinavian expert team I have participated in an analysis (meta-evaluation) of the evaluation of the merger of the national employment agency, the social insurance administration and local social services into... [ view full abstract ]

As member of a Scandinavian expert team I have participated in an analysis (meta-evaluation) of the evaluation of the merger of the national employment agency, the social insurance administration and local social services into (what presents itself as) one organisation, NAV (Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration). It is both an organisational and a social policy reform, and one of the largest welfare reforms in Norway ever. It has affected services that in one way or another have implications for most citizens in the country, as well as the working conditions and practice of large groups of professionals. The evaluation of the reform was administered by the Norwegian Research Council (NRC), and followed the implementation of the reform for more than eight years. It was carried out by an inter-disciplinary team of researchers from universities and research centres, and it was completed in June 2014. The goal of the evaluation was, broadly speaking, twofold: giving feed-back to the implementation process and long-term knowledge building. Judging from the substantial number of publications from the evaluation, and from the data we gathered in the meta-evaluation, the latter goal got more attention than the former. The way the evaluation was organised may be one reason for this, its scope and resources another. The dialogue between the researchers and central actors in the implementation organisation was halting all the way through the evaluation process, and the latter found the results of the evaluation less useful than they had planned for. The meta-evaluation resulted in a list of questions fundamental to evaluations where conflicts of interests are involved, and which need to be dealt with in the process of designing the evaluation.