A
review
of
policy
and
its
implementation - lessons drawn
from recent audits
Algemene Rekenkamer
Lange Voorhout 8
P.O. Box 20015
2500 EA The Hague
THE NETHERLANDS
A review of policy and its implementation lessons drawn from recent audits
Contents
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A Review of policy and its implementation
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1.1 Introduction
1
1.2 Policy and its implementation
2
1.3 Has the policy been fully implemented?
4
1.4 Are policies being implemented properly?
6
1.5 Concluding remarks
9
1.6 Response by the Minister of Finance on behalf of the Prime
Minister and the government
1.7 Court of Audit afterword
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A Review of policy and its
implementation
1.1
Introduction
The budgets for 2003 give the impression of an ambitious government
aiming for new policies in fields such as law and order, care, the
integration of ethnic minorities, and education. But do these policy
announcements actually have any impact in practice? In order to answer
this question, the Netherlands Court of Audit has selected a number of
major themes and compared the situation described in its audit reports
of the past few years with the situation as at the end of 2002. The
Court’s main concern was to ascertain whether the problems raised at
the time have now been solved. This memorandum sets out the findings
of this review.
The themes examined were as follows:
• Law and order
• The repatriation of rejected asylum seekers
• The integration of and Dutch-language classes for ethnic minorities
• Food safety
• Problem youngsters
• Early school-leavers
• The reintegration of invalidity benefit claimants
• Information in the care sector
• Infrastructure
• Climate policy
• Tax as a policy instrument
• Peace operations
Many of these themes also have high priority in the Court’s audit
strategy.1 The main reason for selecting these particular themes was the
fact that they are areas in which central government plays a vital role,
particularly for vulnerable groups in society.
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The Court’s priority areas are: the environment, education, care, income, housing and law
and order.
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1.2
Policy and its implementation
The Court of Audit is not concerned with the substance of government
policy: this is the preserve of politicians. The Court’s task is to assess
whether, in the light of the decisions made, policy is clear and has been
properly implemented.
The main concern is whether policy is clearly targeted at a particular
issue, what the scale of the problem is, what the target group is, what
sort of solution the policy is intended to bring about, and when.
When it comes to implementation, the Court considers questions such as:
• What activities have been planned in order to achieve the policy
objectives?
• Have the planned activities been performed, and have they been
performed efficiently, i.e. at the lowest possible cost?
• Have the policy objectives been achieved, i.e. has the problem been
solved or has the situation improved?
• Are any improvements due to government policy or to developments
that are not connected with government policy?
The Court primarily uses information supplied by ministries. This makes
sense: after all, the ministries need this information themselves both to
implement their policies and to report on their performance. They are
also obliged to evaluate their policies every five years. In other words,
this information should theoretically answer all the Court’s questions.
However, it is clear from the results of the audits performed by the Court
that this is not the situation in practice. Only in very few instances is all
the information actually available. The Court regards this as a crucial
point: only if good-quality information is available both on policies and
on their implementation and impact can the minister and/or the House of
Representatives take well-founded decisions on whether to continue with
a policy, discontinue it or modify it. The VBTB process (involving a shift
in emphasis from input-oriented management to results-based
management) was introduced a number of years ago and is intended to
result in a new, transparent method of budgeting for and reporting on
government policy. It requires ministers to demonstrate what their
policies were intended to achieve, how they intended to achieve it, how
much money was set aside for the purpose, and at the end of the day,
what they actually achieved, and at what cost. However, improvements
in the flow of policy information have been slow in coming.
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One of the basic problems is that many ministries do not possess any
information on the degree to which their activities have actually
succeeded in achieving certain policy objectives. Because such
information is not available, it is difficult to say which aspects of policy
have been implemented and which have not. Moreover, the absence of
this information inevitably means that it is not possible to assess the
decision to implement only certain aspects of policy.
Where information is available, it often relates solely to policy that is in
the process of implementation and its results. However, this information
is also often inadequate, which makes it difficult to describe with any
degree of accuracy the quality of policy implementation and the results
of activities. In most cases, what information is available leads to the
conclusion that the policy in question has not been properly
implemented.
The situation may be represented diagrammatically as follows:
Has the policy been fully
Has the policy been properly
implemented? I
implemented? II
No policy
It is not clear whether the policy
It is not clear whether the policy
information
has been fully implemented
has been properly implemented
Policy
The policy has
The policy has
The policy has
The policy has
information
been fully
not been fully
been properly
not been
available B
implemented 1
implemented 2
implemented
properly
available A
implemented 2
Although the answers to these questions (assuming that they can indeed
be answered) vary from one audit to another, it is hardly ever the case
that all policy information is available and that the Court may conclude
that the policy in question has been implemented both fully and properly.
The Court of Audit wishes to emphasise this point, because it implies
that:
• in many cases, the problems the policy was intended to solve persist
for longer than was intended when it was decided to pursue the policy
in the first place;
• the House of Representatives may well be unaware of this, because no
information is available on certain aspects of policy implementation.
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In order to illustrate these points, the Court has taken a number of
examples from recent audits. For more detailed information, please see
the relevant sections on each theme.
1.3
Has the policy been fully implemented?
It is not clear whether the policy has been fully implemented (IA)
The absence of relevant information means that it is not always clear
whether the policy in question has been implemented and, if so, whether
it has been implemented in full. An example of this is the scheme for
bringing early school-leavers back into education. An audit conducted by
the Court at the end of 2001 revealed that the records were of such poor
quality that it was not possible to calculate the precise number of school
dropouts. This means that neither the minister nor the House of
Representatives can know to what extent the policy aimed at this
particular target group is being implemented. The Court’s own audit
showed that the scheme had failed to reach around 13% of all registered
dropouts.
The policy on shelters in the community is another example of an area
where no hard facts are available on a particular problem group – in this
case homeless young people. No one knows exactly how many homeless
young people there are. The Minister of Health, Welfare and Sport does
not have a policy on individual target groups, which means, for example,
that no statistics are kept on this category of young people. To
compound matters, the various experts and care organisations are
unable to agree on the precise definition of a ‘homeless young person’.
Moreover, no data are available on whether or not the services currently
on offer are adequate. An investigation carried out by the Court in 2002
showed that there were at least 2,700 homeless young people in the
Netherlands.
The policy has not been fully implemented (IB2)
In cases where there is a reasonable amount of policy information, the
available data sometimes show that the policy in question has not been
implemented in full. This may be because it is simply not feasible to
implement all aspects of the policy. A good example of this is the work of
the inspectorates. An audit performed in 2002 revealed that the
inspectorates were not discharging all their statutory duties. Their
statutory responsibilities are so wide-ranging that they are forced to
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make choices. However, there is no clear rationale for these choices. In
other words, the inspectorates are handling only some of the problems
they are supposed to handle. This poses a direct threat to the standard
of enforcement.
A 2002 audit of measures to combat juvenile crime showed that the files
on over 40% of first-time young offenders contained no information on
any action taken. And yet the offences involved were no different or less
serious than the cases where the police had taken action.
Another example is the practice of releasing suspects due to a shortage
of prison cells. An audit performed in 1997 showed that some suspects
were being released from pre-trial detention. Following an examination of
the files, the Court of Audit concluded that there was a substantial risk
that the sentences subsequently imposed on some of those released
(whether custodial sentences or alternative sanctions) would never
actually be enforced. In the meantime, the problem has been largely
resolved by the practice of releasing prisoners early or temporarily
whenever there is a risk of a cell shortage. The Court concludes that the
problem of the release of suspects has now been transmuted into a
growing problem of the release of convicted offenders. The consequence
is that it remains unclear whether the policy on criminal law enforcement
is being fully implemented.
In many cases, it is difficult to explain exactly why policy has not been
fully implemented. An audit conducted in 2001 into efforts to combat
educational disadvantage showed that half of all plans made by local
authorities to tackle this problem did not take account of their statutory
obligations. When the new Sheltered Employment Act came into effect,
many local authorities failed to fulfil their statutory duty to ascertain
what had happened to some or all of those who had been removed from
the waiting lists for sheltered employment when the new criteria took
effect.
Overall impression as to whether government policy is being
implemented in full (I)
Not a single audit performed by the Court of Audit in recent years has
shown evidence of a policy that has been fully implemented. Either
insufficient information was available to warrant such a conclusion, or the
information that was available suggested that the policy had not been
fully implemented.
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The Court cannot avoid the impression that the civil service has far too
many responsibilities and may even have been struggling to keep its
head above water for many decades now. In order to survive, the civil
service has decided to do what it can instead of what it should.
1.4
Are policies being implemented properly?
It is not clear whether the policy has been properly implemented (IIA)
Here too, reliable policy information needs to be available in order to
detect any shortcomings in policy implementation. Without any
information on the process and the results, it is impossible to form a
judgement on the quality of policy implementation. The audits performed
by the Court in recent years have thrown up many examples of situations
where there is simply no information on the implementation of
government policies. In most of these cases, the missing information
related to the impact of the policy. We should now like to give a few
examples.
When the policy aimed at combating educational disadvantage was
audited in 2001, the findings made clear that the government did not
know whether the policy was actually having any effect, despite the
availability of research data in this field. Although the education gap has
not narrowed during the past 20 years, nobody knows whether it would
have widened had no action been taken.
It is unclear whether many of the tax incentives introduced during the
past decade have actually had their intended effect.
With regard to asylum policy, the government does not know whether
the majority of unsuccessful asylum seekers have actually left the
Netherlands, despite the fact that its policy is aimed explicitly at
encouraging them to arrange their own return.
For a long time, it was unclear whether the policy of increasing the
capacity of the country’s police forces had been properly implemented,
because the figures on the size of the forces were not reliable.
Improvements have now been made in this area.
The Court of Audit also encountered other examples in which clear
improvements had been achieved in relation to policy information. The
Ministry of Defence, for example, has structured the flow of information
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on peace operations in such a way that key lessons learned from one
operation can now serve as input for subsequent operations. The Ministry
of Transport, Public Works and Water Management has developed a
standard decision-making procedure for infrastructural projects in which
information plays a key role.
The policy has not been properly implemented (IIB2)
In some cases in which the relevant minister does collect information,
the information shows that the policy in question has not been properly
implemented. It is clear from the practical examples that all sorts of
different factors may be at work here.
Conflicting policy objectives
The Ministry of Economic Affairs is responsible for certain aspects of the
government’s climate policy, the aim of which is to reduce CO2
emissions. At the same time, the prime role of the Ministry of Economic
Affairs is to foster the country’s economic growth, and measures to
stimulate economic growth can easily raise CO2 emissions. The
government’s climate policy does not suggest ways and mains of dealing
with such conflicts, which need priorities to be set on a government-wide
basis. As a result, it is not clear whether the Netherlands will be able to
achieve the CO2 emission targets set for 2010 under the Kyoto Protocol.
Another example concerns the capacity of the Dutch police forces. Some
of the progress made in increasing capacity was offset by the terms of
the collective agreement reached in 1998, under which the working week
for police officers was reduced from 38 to 36 hours. This reduced the
available police capacity by 5% at a stroke.
Insufficient thought given to policy decisions
Giving insufficient thought to policy decisions raises the risk that the
policy in question will not be properly implemented. This is illustrated by
the prison construction programme. A report published in 1999 claimed
that most of the practical problems surrounding the programme were
caused by the political and social clamour for a rapid increase in the
number of cells. The government’s current programme on law and order
adds to the pressure for an expansion in prison capacity. Insufficient
account has been taken of its effects in financial, staffing and legislative
terms. The new government has been left to decide whether the current
measures designed to make more efficient use of the existing capacity
are indeed adequate. When the time comes to take this decision, there is
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a risk that the programme will again be encountering the type of
practical problems highlighted by the Court of Audit. There will also be a
greater security risk if (as is already happening at the moment) prison
officers need to be recruited on temporary contracts, without any prior
screening, in order to be sure that new prisons are properly staffed.
Lack of rigorous management by the ministries
In some cases, the implementation of government policy is difficult to
manage because authorities other than central government are
responsible for putting it into effect, often in conjunction with civilsociety organisations. This may result in a fragmented approach being
taken to complex problems, such as those of juvenile delinquency and
law and order in general. Where the successful solution of a problem
hinges on effective cooperation between executive agencies and
government bodies at various levels, the ministries concerned should not
hesitate to retain a firm grip on policy implementation. Many policies
suffer badly from an absence of central authority.
The way in which policies are funded may also prevent them from being
implemented in a cohesive fashion. One example of this is the way in
which programmes for integrating immigrants, both newcomers and
those who have lived in the Netherlands for some time, are funded. The
strict separation of financial flows prevents the development of
customised programmes.
Reorganisations
Often, one of the reasons for reorganising government departments is to
improve the quality of policy implementation. In practice, however, such
improvements often take a long time to make themselves felt. One
example of this is the merger of the National Commodity Inspectorate
and the Government Meat and Livestock Inspectorate, which were
combined in July 2002 to form a new agency known as the Dutch Food
and Non-Food Authority, with the aim of improving the standard of food
safety checks. An audit performed by the Court of Audit revealed that the
new authority was not performing well. As a result, the authority has so
far failed to achieve any improvements.
In the social security sector, it will undoubtedly be several years before
the body responsible for implementing employee insurance schemes
(founded on 1 January 2002) will be operating according to plan. The
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new body is the result of the amalgamation of five formerly separate
benefits agencies.
Intractable problems
As we have already mentioned, information is a problem in education.
The ministry is aware of the problem and has taken steps to improve the
situation. The ministry is currently preparing for the introduction of an
‘education number’, a unique registration number that will be allotted to
every single school pupil for use in all records. Unfortunately, the system
will not become fully operational until 2006, due to legal complications
and technical problems.
Overall impression regarding the quality of policy implementation (II)
There have been few occasions in recent years when the Court of Audit
has been the bearer of good news. It would be facile to attribute this
solely to its selection of subjects for audit. If this were true, the
theoretical implication would be that all policies not investigated by the
Court had been both fully and properly implemented. This is highly
unlikely, however, given the consistency with which the Court identifies
practical problems and gaps in the information on policy implementation
and impact. Indeed, the Court is firmly convinced that the government
has bitten off more than it can chew.
1.5
Concluding remarks
The officials responsible for the implementation of government policy are
not generally to blame for the fact that the Court is forced to reach the
same alarming conclusions about the implementation of policies and the
flow of information in all kinds of fields. The Court believes rather that
the recurring problems affecting the implementation of policy are caused
by:
• inadequate preparation and overambitious planning;
• the overrating of policymaking and the underrating of policy
implementation;
• an insufficient interest in reporting, evaluation and costing;
• an apparent inability to learn from the past.
While no hard data are available on policy implementation, it is clear that
something must be seriously wrong if a review of the audits performed
over the past four years reveals so many examples not only of policies
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that have not been fully or properly implemented, but also of policies of
which we have no idea whether they have been either fully or properly
implemented. The Court is particularly concerned about policies that
have not been fully implemented (i.e. where they have affected only a
certain proportion of the target group, where not all the proposed
measures have been taken, or where there are gaps in the requisite
records). It is impossible to decide whether a policy has been properly
implemented if certain aspects of it have not been implemented at all.
Moreover, published reports often pay scant attention to such policies,
with the result that nobody realises that the government has simply
failed to implement certain aspects of its policies, without explaining
why.
It is apparently impossible to strike the right balance between policy,
human and financial resources, and the amount of time available for
implementation. The Court regards this apparent incompatibility – gap, if
you like – between political goals and their practical implementation as
one of the greatest threats to the credibility of central government, and
to public confidence in the government. It also feels it has a duty to
focus on this problem in future audits, and expresses the hope that
parliament will seek to narrow the gap between political goals and the
reality on the ground.
1.6
Response by the Minister of Finance on behalf of
the Prime Minister and the government
On 17 March 2003, the Minister of Finance responded to this general
review on behalf of the Prime Minister and the other members of the
government. The main points of his response are reproduced below.
Main points of response
The government points out first of all that many of the social problems
for which people look to the government for a solution are both highly
complex and intractable. This means that the government becomes
something of a repository for problems which the ‘open market’ is unable
to resolve. Political aspirations expressed in the past may sometimes
have created the impression that the government is capable of solving
such problems. Yet the government is no panacea. The government
acknowledges that a realistic view of its aims and performance can help
to enhance its credibility. It believes that the VBTB operation should help
to improve the transparency and realism of the government’s policy
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objectives. The government believes that the main conclusion drawn by
the Court is that information about the implementation of policy is often
missing and that, where such information is available, it is clear that the
policies in question have not been properly implemented, due to a
number of factors.
The Minister writes that the government is aware of the importance of
implementing policy as fully as possible, and of sufficient information
being made available to allow it to ascertain whether policies have
indeed been fully implemented and/or to take any remedial action that
may be needed. He refers to the general measures that have been taken
to improve the flow of information and the response to policy
implementation, for example in relation to bodies with a statutory task,
and as part of the VBTB operation.
In this sense, a systematic approach to budgeting and reporting can
prompt more methodical organisation of information on policy, policy
implementation and the impact of policy. It is quite simply a fact of life
that the best way of assessing and learning is by looking and comparing,
and ‘fixed’ benchmarks are needed for this. Society cannot be moulded
into a pre-ordained shape, although it is true that social trends can be
controlled to a certain extent. The VBTB operation is designed to
communicate the government’s objectives and show people how it has
reached a particular decision in a particular context. The social and
political context is such that it is not always possible to think through all
the potential implications of a policy in advance.
• While there will always be conflicts between different policy objectives,
the government is seeking to improve the transparency of its decisions
in such cases.
• Because the context is constantly changing, policy can never be 100%
effective.
• Information provided on policy shaped and/or implemented locally
should be adequate for local democratic control, and proportionate to
the goal the policy is intended to achieve.
• To inspire confidence, government needs to bridge the gap between its
aspirations and its actual implementation capacity. Confidence springs
from clarity about the responsibilities of government and what it can
realistically achieve.
• Relevance to policy management, information value and the
relationship between cost and benefits are key factors in deciding
whether or not to organise the flow of information.
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The VBTB operation
The VBTB operation (the Dutch acronym stands for ‘From Policy Budgets
to Policy Accountability’) will reveal how realistic government targets are,
where coordination problems occur and where the division of
responsibilities is unclear. The government needs to be aware of the risk
of raising hopes too high. Public confidence in the government springs
from clarity about its responsibilities, and about what it can realistically
achieve. Many of the targets the government set itself in the past were
clearly overambitious.
As regards the provision of information on policy shaped and/or
implemented on a local basis, VBTB policy is that ministers should also
be expected to report on results for which they are not directly
responsible, but which do give an indication of the effectiveness of the
policy framework for which they are responsible, and which may be
highly relevant to policymaking. In over half of such cases, direct and
indirect responsibilities have been identified and the ministries are now
doing their best to ensure that their performance is reflected in both
budgets and reports.
The government regards the findings in the draft report entitled Between
Policy and Implementation as valuable support for its efforts to further
improve the development of policy and the flow of policy information,
and how this is reflected in the VBTB budgets and annual reports.
However, it feels that the suggestion that ‘only if good-quality
information is available both on policies and on their implementation and
impact can the minister and/or the House of Representatives take wellfounded decisions on whether to continue with a policy, discontinue it or
modify it’ is too radical a conclusion. Although it is undoubtedly true that
decision-making benefits from good information on policy matters, other
factors are also important. There may for instance be a social – and
hence political – need to take rapid action, without any in-depth problem
and policy analysis in advance. Obviously, as the situation unfolds, so the
government needs to take stock of its policy, decide how it should be
implemented and figure out the type of information that needs to be
provided about it. Its aim in doing so should be to underpin its decisionmaking as firmly as possible.
Effective reporting procedures
The government believes that ministers can effectively use the budgeting
and reporting procedures to report on the progress they are making in
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drawing lessons from the past. Where these lessons involve a number of
policy areas and ministries, the government suggests that a decision
should be taken each year as to whether they should be included in the
central government annual financial report, so as to maximise the
learning effect throughout the public sector. Whilst the minister
acknowledges that the Court of Audit’s conclusions merit a ‘meta report’
of their own, he points out that it is wise to avoid too many reports on
reports, and responses to responses, and the inevitable coordination
problems this leads to.
Learning opportunities
So as not to raise any false hopes, one also has to be clear about how
much it is possible to learn from policy. In the case of policy information,
it is important to make a distinction between the intended effects of
policy on citizens (i.e. the policy outcome) and the actual results of
policy implementation (i.e. the policy output). As the minister sees it,
Between Policy and Implementation examines matters mainly from the
latter perspective. The minister wishes to stress the difficulty of
obtaining information purely about policy outcomes. After all, it is
difficult to prove that it was not factors other than the policy in question
that played a predominant role in achieving the intended effect. Whilst
exogenous factors may be involved (for example, economic growth,
labour market trends or the behaviour of the target group), the role
played by third parties in the implementation of policy may also help to
explain why the intended effects are not always achieved.
Although policy evaluations always generate information that can be
used to refine government policy, they are always expensive
undertakings. The minister believes that whether or not information
should be structured depends primarily on its relevance to policy
management, its value to the House of Representatives and a costbenefit analysis.
Government proposals in response to ‘Between Policy and
Implementation’
The government regards the VBTB operation as a general attempt to
resolve the shortcomings identified by the Court of Audit in information
on government policy and its implementation. Although the benefits will
take some time to make themselves felt, initial results suggest that the
approach is both realistic and effective. The government therefore
proposes that:
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1 the VBTB operation should be pursued with full vigour, as it should
enable the government to:
• assess policy objectives, resources (including the resources deployed
by and the costs incurred by executive agencies) and results in the
light of realistic targets and risks;
• build up a transparent picture of a policy setting that is virtually by
definition complex and intractable;
• report systematically on its policy plans, the implementation of its
policies and their impact;
• to learn in a systematic way from the past by conducting policy
reviews and adapting future policy accordingly.
2 starting with the Budget Memorandum for 2004, specific and realistic
targets should be formulated for the priorities set by the government.
These targets should be based on budgets and should reflect the
intended results of policies and their implementation.
3 a decision should be taken every year as to whether certain lessons
learned from the Court of Audit’s conclusions and recommendations in
the field of results-based management should be included in the
central government annual financial report, so as to further their
assimilation throughout the public sector.
1.7
Court of Audit afterword
In his response on behalf of the Prime Minister and the government, the
Minister of Finance writes mainly about the provision of information on
the implementation of government policy, and points both to the
opportunities created by the VBTB operation and to its limitations. The
Court of Audit agrees that the provision of information is indeed a crucial
issue, and wishes to respond below to the comments made by the
Minister of Finance.
The Court of Audit would like to point first of all to the apparent
incompatibility that exists between the government’s political ambitions
and the day-to-day practice of policy implementation. It is this gap
between theory and practice that the Court of Audit sees as the core of
the problem. It constitutes one of the greatest threats to the
government’s credibility, in that the problems policy is supposed to
resolve may either remain unresolved or take longer to resolve than
planned because the policy either is not properly implemented or is not
implemented at all.
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In this respect the Court of Audit agrees with the government that the
VBTB operation has prioritised the formulation of clear objectives
accompanied by specific targets. Ideally, the presence of a mechanism
for reporting on past achievements should give a clear indication of how
realistic planned policy is likely to be. The Court of Audit therefore
regards the VBTB operation as a vital disciplinary tool that should give
both ministries and the House of Representatives an idea of the gap
between policy objectives and results, and the practicability of policy.
Although the Court therefore welcomes the government’s plans
vigorously to pursue the VBTB operation, it feels it is important to bear in
mind that, whilst the operation should ideally improve the flow of
information, it will not automatically close the gap between policy
ambitions and implementation.
Further to the government’s comments about the VBTB operation, the
Court of Audit wishes to emphasise that it, too, believes it is important to
carefully weigh up the cost of data collection against the benefits derived
from it in terms of managing policy and informing the House of
Representatives. Indeed, it is this very point that is addressed by the
Order on Performance Data and Evaluations in Central Government. At
the same time, the Court of Audit believes that decisions to pursue or
change certain policies should be based as far as possible on reliable
data. The fact that other factors, such as a political or social need for
rapid action, may play a role should not detract from this general
principle.
The Court of Audit welcomes the government’s plans to include in the
central government annual financial report certain conclusions drawn
from audits performed by the Court of Audit that apply throughout the
public sector.
Finally, the Court of Audit wishes to make clear that, although it has no
intention to publish an endless series of audit findings, it wishes to
perform more systematic ‘meta evaluations’ of previous audits, so as to
identify long-term trends.
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