The main evaluation experiences of Spanish central government have addressed social, health,
educational and technological policy, with a focus on their social impact and/on the quality of the
provided services, always on a sector-specific approach. This is the case of the evaluation
conducted in education by ANECA (the Spanish agency for quality assessment and accreditation in
higher education) and Instituto de Evaluación (former INECSE - the Spanish institute for evaluation
and quality of the education system), in healthcare by the Agencia de Calidad del Sistema Nacional
de Salud (the national health system quality agency), in employment matters by INEM and the public
employment service, in public-sector science, technology, research and development by ANEP (the
Spanish agency for evaluation and prospective assessment), and in international cooperation for
development by the Directorate General of Development Policy Planning and Evaluation.
In addition, valuable contributions were made by other public and private bodies engaging in
evaluation-related work (evaluation societies, research institutes, universities, etc), and
evaluation work has been done by some autonomous communities and local governments.
Other experiences include:
• evaluation of allocation and use of Community funds by the Ministry of Finance,
pursuant to the applicable Community law;
• service quality evaluations instituted by the Ministry for Public Administration in
an effort to raise satisfaction among citizens as customers of public bodies, and the role of the
service inspectorates in all territorial ambits of government;
• budget, accounting and legal control and evaluation of spending and subsidies policy
carried on by the directorate general of budget and the central government comptroller general at
the Ministry of the Treasury;
• the audit and jurisdictional functions of the Tribunal de Cuentas (the Spanish Court
of Audit) for external oversight of the economic and financial affairs of the public sector;
and
• ex ante evaluation and impact analysis of interventions set out in briefing papers
and economic memoranda written in support of government legislative proposals.
