Program Management and the Federal Evaluator

Abstract

The next two papers are written by authors in agencies of the legislature, Richard Brown and Ray Pethtel from the state level and Keith E. Marvin and James L. Hedrick from the federal. The paper by Brown and Pethtel summarizes developments in the states and gives illustrations and observations from their experience with the New York State Legislative Commission on Expenditure Review, an agency concerned with program audits. Keith E. Marvin and James L. Hedrick discuss new developments in Congress and the General Accounting Office that affect program evaluation. Of particular interest is the concern with evaluating program evaluations and synthesizing the results for Congress. They also suggest the possibility of using computer simulations in place of actual experimentation. The last paper, Program Evalution and Administrative Theory, the only paper by a non-practitioner, attempts to relate program evaluation to the academic and theoretical literature of public administration.