Management and Evaluation within the Plano Plurianual : Institutionalization without Impact?

Abstract

This report was prepared in response to
 the request from the Government of Brazil to evaluate the
 experiencia de Avaliacao do Plano Plurianual (PPA's)
 evaluation system and propose ways it could be strengthened.
 In our understanding, the genesis of the PPA as an
 instrument of government planning and management and its
 philosophy was circa 1999. It was then that the decision was
 made to apply a particular planning model piloted with a set
 of priority projects (Brazil em Acao) in the 1996-99 PPA to
 the entire set of government activities in the PPA 2000-03.
 The current state of the PPA reflects a series of
 evolutionary changes since then, with the improvements in
 its evaluation framework being one of them. Because of this
 origin, understanding and evaluating the PPA evaluation
 system will require placing it in the context of the
 evolution and the effectiveness of the whole PPA, as
 envisioned in its original model and its subsequent
 adaptations. The point of departure is the observation that
 the primary challenge is to make the PPA effective as an
 instrument to make the federal administration more
 performance oriented. Improvements to the evaluation system
 as such, though welcome and needed, should be a secondary
 objective for the government, as this is only a limited part
 of the whole endeavor.