This paper considers how to conduct policy evaluation from a socio-gender perspective, using a conceptual framework of comparative gender analysis of social policies. It discusses what is social policy, proposes to include industrial and economic policies as well as those conventional policy areas centered on social security, health, and welfare services, housing, education, and so on in social policy studies.
It then introduces a gendered model of policy processes, after noticing some points to be checked in analyzing policies comparatively on institutional structure of policy-making and -implementing bodies such as constitution, representation, internal democracy and grievance procedure. The policy process model is a substantially revised and gendered one of the “model of welfare production”, which was thoroughly utilized by Deborah Mitchell in her pioneering comparative analysis of income transfers based on LIS database.
A subsequent section applies the model to analyze and characterize several income generation projects more or less targeted to women in rural Nepal and Thailand. The projects were surveyed in 1997 in field researches organized by Japanese National Women's Education Center and supported by the Ministry of Education's Grant-In-Aid for International Scientific Research, in which the author participated as a leader of Thai team.
The conclusion gives a list of check points in evaluating social policies from a gender perspective, while classifying policies to gender-blind, practical-gender-issue-responsive, and strategic-gender-issueresponsive. The check points are relative urgency and importance of the policy in question (efficiency in the widest sense), appropriateness (including the extent of gender-blindness) of policy issues recognized, appropriateness of policy goals and objectives in the light of policy issues, appropriateness of policy measures in the light of policy goals, adequacy of policy inputs, extent of leaking of policy inputs out of policy targets (efficiency in a narrower sense), reducing of policy outputs by unpredicted side-outputs (efficiency in a wider sense), reducing of policy outcome by adverse intra-household redistribution, extent of the policy goals achieved in final outcomes (effectiveness), and sustainability of outcomes (effectiveness in mid-to long term).

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Governance has undergone a transformation to accommodate accountability and emerging role of citizens in present day Japan. Knowledge-based governance (KBG) is a product of the changing nature of governance, and the development of evaluation and performance measurement. As evaluation in the public sector is being institutionalized both in central and local government, management practices have been geared toward knowledge-based management.
Following an explanation of KBG and its relationship with performance measurement, the background of evaluation and performance measurement is described. Examples of current practices of knowledgebased management and performance measurement in Japan's local governments can lead to a universal governance model supported by an effective performance measurement/management system.
Although KBG remains to be demonstrated by further empirical studies, this model includes management learning processes where people can identify and share their knowledge on objectives based on three key terms: target, intention and outcome. Knowledge sharing and collaboration are the main factors constituting this new governance, and knowledge is a key component as a competitive resource leading to continuous innovations. The cases in Japan confirm that a knowledge-based strategy is also effective in the public sector.

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The aim of this paper is to trace how village women changed their consciousness and action and to attempt to evaluate these changes, based on my field work from 1994 to 2001 on the process of how the micro-level “quality-of-life improvement projects” were conducted in the farming village S in the Republic of Paraguay.
Recently human-centered sustainable development is gaining importance as a means of promoting people's empowerment in the area of development cooperation. However, since sustainable development requires the changes of people's consciousness and action, and such qualitative changes are not easy to evaluate, new methods of evaluation are now being developed.
This paper makes a qualitative study of 11 women involved in quality-of-life improvement projects and analyzes the results of these projects. First, it illustrates how the specific results of these projects can be categorized into “three types, ” which are derived by contrasting these specific results in light of the goal of these projects set by the women in the early stage of the projects and by incorporating the viewpoints of Moser's practical and strategic gender needs. One of the most significant findings is that as type 1 results produce type 2 and 3 results and the three types interact with each other, the women begin to mention their changes. Second, the paper reveals the process of the empowerment of the community women themselves. Third, through an analysis of the discourse of the women's groups, I have extracted 12 items of the empowerment index. Furthermore, the original goals of these projects have undergone transition in the course of time from practical to strategic gender needs.
If we are to continue to pursue sustainable development and human-centered development projects, we should explore the methods of evaluation considering people's quality changes, which can be revealed by focusing on the three types of results as this paper has shown.

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Performance measurement has been widely introduced to Japanese public and nonprofit organizations in recent years. It has been introduced not only by the Western aid agencies and international aid agencies, such as USAID, Canadian SIDA, Swedish SIDA and UNDP, but also Japanese aid agencies such as JICA and JBIC. Also Japanese domestic ministries and local authorities have eagerly introduced similar monitoring systems based on performance measurement.
Performance measurement has pros and cons. The pros include its simplicities:(1) No need to prepare comparative groups and (2) No need to apply formal statistical judgment. Also (3) performance measurement provides on-time information that can be utilized for rapid adjustment of the on-going programs. On the other hand, performance measurement has the following cons:(1) It is difficult to remove outside effect from the values measured by the performance indicators;(2) It provides only partial information for decision-making;(3) It is an 'information production activity' and there is an underlying cost.
New trends in performance measurement include mixed use of performance measurement and indepth evaluation; comparative performance measurement; theory-based performance measurement; moving from measurement to management; and cost-benefit focused performance measurement. Performance measurement has been developed based on operational needs of public administrators and on request of accountability by taxpayers. Japanese public and nonprofit organizations are just at the initial stage of introduction of performance measurement, and they are recommended to carefully but seriously examine possibility of applying those new trends.

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Today a lot of Japanese local governments pay attention to public sector evaluation system Establishing public sector evaluation system increases the efficiency and effectiveness of government which is part of the impetus for implementing results-based government.
The purpose of this paper is to consider how local government establishes program evaluation system linked with comprehensive plan after the introduction of project evaluation system.
There are three viewpoints in program evaluation. The first is the benchmarking, the systematic comparison of one organization to another with the aim of mutual improvement. The second is the effectiveness, the extent to which the outputs of a project meet the citizen's needs and expectations. The third is the multi criteria analysis, setting priorities in the projects by means of comparing with some projects from multi-criteria.
Establishing program evaluation system linked with comprehensive plan requires two components. One is the linkage with the master-plan structure. As the long-term policy document for local government, the master-plan is both a statement of purpose and guideline of general direction to desired conditions. The other is the linkage with the short-term action planning process which demands to compare with some projects from multi-criteria.

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Since the 1990s, the momentum for using performance measurement in the U.S. public sector has been growing as a result of an increased focus on outcome indicators and citizen involvement in government. Performance measurement has become a commonly used tool in performance-based budgeting, strategic planning, and developing performance management systems. It is also frequently used to create baseline comparisons for implementing benchmarking in state and local governments.
However, despite the growing interest on the part of public officials, performance measurement is still not well understood. This is mainly because the study of performance measurement has lagged behind its implementation, and systematic and thorough research of this phenomenon has not yet taken place. The role of scholars and researchers will be crucial in guiding the further dissemination, appropriate use, and effective implementation of performance measurement. Concurrently, heads of public sector organizations must provide leadership and incentive for better incorporating performance measurement into their organizations' management systems.

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Six years have passed since the inception of the Mie Prefecture Performance Measurement System and it has now entered its seventh year. Currently, this system serves as the model for evaluation systems implemented by local government.
This system was created as the basic tool for the administrative reform of Mie Prefecture which fundamentally involves a people-oriented administration as its objective. The analyses of its formation and development processes have revealed that the basic nature of this system is affiliated with performance measurement, one of the evaluation types that are currently under debate.
The efficacy of this system has been gradually manifested in the reform attitudes of civil service, the creation of people-oriented policies, and hence the culture of the prefectural government bureaucratic system. While the system will retain its basic nature, it is expected to further improve, being accompanied with two main concerns: effective coordination of various components of this system, and enhancement of citizen participation and collaboration to be incorporated into this system inherently oriented toward internal management.

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While Japanese Government is introducing “policy evaluation” system on the whole, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has adopted the unique system called “Performance Management Strategy”. It consists of Performance Measurement, Program Evaluation and Policy Assessment, and they are related each other in the “policy management cycle”. The Ministry's purpose to introduce this unique system is to establish “Management by Objectives” in every policy area. While many people think “project evaluation” is essential, the Ministry thinks differently. It seeks mission-oriented and results-oriented management system. To achieve that, we need “business strategy” or “Strategic Plan” like in the GPRA. And to establish a strategy, we need performance measurement at first. The Ministry puts emphasis on “Learning and Growing” on the first stage of implementing this system.

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JICA's Guideline for Evaluation clarifies its policy for evaluation and presents a set of project evaluation methodologies. JICA aims at establishing an evaluation system from ex-ante through ex-post evaluation, and considers evaluation as an internal management tool for improving its program and project performance. The basic methodologies of project evaluation are DAC's five evaluation criteria (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability), and program theory of evaluation utilizing the Project Design Matrix (PDM).
In addition to that, the Guideline emphasizes assessing implementation process in order to analyze both constraints and contributing factors of project performance, which provides useful information on feedback. The idea for evaluation that the Guideline is in line with is the concept of learning organization, securing feedback and accountability and improving JICA's decision making process as well as planning operation.
Some issues that should be discussed further for clarification are those related to the participatory evaluation, the feedback mechanism, the process evaluation, and the program evaluation. The Guideline itself will be open to the public through JICA's web site, and will be revised in accordance with the lessons learned from evaluation studies and the discussion with the wide range of stakeholders.

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