Beginning in 2007, Benin’s reformist leaders sought to strengthen the quality of governance and public management by instituting a system for evaluating public policies. National policies and programs often had little impact on development outcomes, and existing systems for monitoring and evaluating government initiatives were largely donor driven and designed to fit donors’ needs. As a result, the government struggled to define, prioritize, and coordinate policies within and across disparate sectors like agriculture, health, and education. With the support of newly elected president, Boni Yayi, Pascal Koupaki, Benin’s minister for planning, development and evaluation, created a bureau for policy evaluation to analyze public policies across different ministries, assess their impacts, and recommend improvements. Given the prevalence of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, the idea of evaluation initially enjoyed little political support. However, a small team based in Koupaki’s ministry, gradually built national evaluation capacities and increased internal demand for policy evaluation. By 2015, the bureau had become a permanent part of the administration, completed more than a dozen evaluation studies, and inspired the establishment of national evaluation mechanisms in West African neighbors Togo, Burkina Faso, and Mali.

Pallavi Nuka, ISS Associate Director, and Khady Thiam, of Sciences Po's Paris School of International Affairs drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Cotonou and Abidjan in September 2015. This case study was funded by the French Development Agency. Case published April 2016.

As of January 2008, South African citizens had to wait more than four months, on average, to get a government identity document. The delays in producing IDs, which disrupted lives by preventing citizens from working or accessing government benefits, reflected longstanding organizational problems at the Department of Home Affairs, the agency responsible for issuing the IDs. The processes at each stage of ID production were in disarray, and the department's staff lacked effective supervision. Backlogs developed; workers became demoralized. In 2007, the department began to tackle the problems. This was one component of an ambitious turnaround strategy that targeted the department's core business processes. In the ID production process, a team of consultants and department officials made individual and group performance measurable daily and weekly. The turnaround team avoided backlash by engaging the staff union, removing the threat of job losses as a result of restructuring, and consulting the workers in each section before making changes. The performance-management changes were informal: Managers evaluated employees' and sections' performance in meetings and on wall charts rather than through the formal performance-appraisal system. By the end of 2008, South African citizens received their ID booklets in an average of less than six weeks.

David Hausman drafted this case study based on interviews conducted in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa in February 2010. Case published April 2011. Case slightly revised and republished March 2013. 

Associated Interview(s):  Mavuso Msimang, Yogie Travern