Saturday, March 21, 2020

Evaluability Assessment of the Corona Virus Pandemic


Ahh, what a world we occupy. It’s pretty amazing that, in this world of advanced science, where we can shoot off rockets to Mars and outer space, gathering data on far flung planets, our government blabs about how wonderful is our response to this pandemic, when everyone in the country understands just the opposite.  Instead of pumping up Trump’s ego 24-7 (he is such a fragile little snowflake) we need to be devising a plan for coping with the worst economic effects of this dreadful pandemic.

Right now, our health care professionals are trying to devise ways to cope with the disease flowing over the country. Can we get enough medical professionals and health care system technologies to cope with this fast spreading disease?  That is the main task now.  But other folks need to be working just as hard right now on how to cope with the economic effects, beginning to be felt throughout the country.

In the old days, just after returning from my earlier career in aerospace planning and control, and our attempts to transfer some of that planning technology to India, I entered a realm on large scale program evaluation, mainly aimed at social and health care systems.  Our mantra at that time was:

If you cannot evaluate the outcomes of these programs, then you also are unlikely to achieve the desired effects.

One of the most common responses by Congress to perceived health, economic or structural problems in the country was to throw money at it. That is, Congress would observe or be told of an upcoming or current problem, they would argue about it for a while, and then someone would proceed to write up a package of money they could toss at the problem. They would pass the package, and then walk away, having “solved” the problem.  Then they would go on to the next problem. Then their “oversight” was a joke, because they never had a clue about how they would adjudge success in the first place.

So, we consulting research staff at The Urban Institute, devised a new approach to program evaluation back in those days of the 1970’s. We called it Evaluability Assessment. That is, you construct a design study to determine whether there exists enough agreement on how to measure success such that you can actually proceed with the implementation.  If you cannot measure success, then you likely will never achieve success.

So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, I submit that we need such an approach right here and right now.  Various people will be “inventing” or “designing” new approaches to deal with the COVID 19 disease and its economic effects. We may already be approaching the 1930s in terms of existing or likely unemployment.  As especially small businesses close, their staff get laid off. Maybe they can claim unemployment, but maybe not. And maybe they can still get health care or maybe not.  But, even beyond the immediate effects, it seems likely that many businesses will simply have to shutter permanently, with even greater staff losses.

I submit that, while health care professionals, e.g., people like Anthony Fauci, are tasked to design health care programs and systems to deal with the pandemic, we need intelligent economists (and apparently not all economists are intelligent) to design a national approach/program to manage the economic effects on the nation. It is my belief that throwing a single check at thousands of people, however welcome might be those checks, will not even come close to solving the economic problems being created right now by this virus.  We need a systemic approach that will help the nation dig its way out of this giant hole this virus is creating.  And we need to subject any resulting program design to the test of Evaluability Assessment. We need real, workable program designs, rather than the usual Trump flapdoodle PR piece intended mainly to make him look good, and regardless of its essential utility to our nation’s good.  This approach has been written up in many forums, and has been applied in health care, in foreign aid, and in Justice programs. One such description of the approach can be found at:


I realize that, in the era of Trumpaganda, almost anything emerging out of the White House is likely to be little more than a Trump PR piece intended to facilitate his re-election (God forbid). But my hope is that some of the more rational and more intelligent professionals who have been forced to stand by in dismay, will actually begin to come to grips with this catastrophic event, and decide to begin designing real, serious approaches to help at least alleviate the worst of the possible economic outcomes.

Fond hope springs eternal.

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