Marc Robinson Blog

Evaluation, Spending Review & the Budget

- February 26, 2025 - Marc Robinson comment

Evaluation should be a key source of information for budget decision-makers. In practice, however, it has had surprisingly little impact on decisions about what to fund and by how much1. This raises the question: what…

Monitoring & Evaluation

Evaluation: What about Efficiency?

- February 19, 2025 - Marc Robinson comment

Is efficiency analysis the poor relation in the current wave of evaluation reforms? Governments around the world have been establishing government-wide evaluation policies; creating central units and task forces to promote evaluation; and encouraging or…

Monitoring & Evaluation

Evaluation: Learning from Past Mistakes

- February 12, 2025 - Marc Robinson comment

A wave of enthusiasm for evaluation has been sweeping governments around the world in recent years. In country after country, governments are acting to increase the amount of evaluation undertaken and ensure that it is…

Budgeting / Fiscal policy

Budgeting Lessons from France

- December 11, 2024 - Marc Robinson comment

France’s budgetary position is disastrous, and the country appears to be moving inexorably towards a fiscal crisis like that which brought Greece to its knees over a decade ago. The land of Molière presents one…

Budgeting / Fiscal policy / Performance Budgeting / PFM

Does PFM need to be rebuilt?

- March 21, 2024 - Marc Robinson 3 Comments

Contemporary public financial management (PFM) is, according to an emerging school of thought, in a parlous condition and needs a complete rebuild. I disagree. An influential recent formulation of the views of this school of…

Monitoring & Evaluation

“Government Analytics” vs M&E

- November 22, 2023 - Marc Robinson comment

To what extent can digitalization give us what we need to properly measure government performance? What follows is the last in a series addressing this question, as well as a closely associated question: should we…

Monitoring & Evaluation / PFM

Quality Measurement & Digitalization

- November 16, 2023 - Marc Robinson comment

What opportunities does digitalization offer for better measures of output quality in the public sector? This question is the focus of what follows – the second in a series examining the extent to which digitalization…

Monitoring & Evaluation

Digitalization and Performance Measurement

- November 10, 2023 - Marc Robinson comment

Digitalization improves public sector performance. But to what extent does it also enhance performance measurement? To what extent can digitalization give us what we need to properly measure government performance? These are questions that I…

Budgeting / Fiscal policy / PFM

A Net Worth Rule: Higher Debt for Higher…

- May 9, 2023 - Marc Robinson 1 Comment

Yet another call for governments to abandon debt limits and focus instead on net worth! This time it’s in the United Kingdom, where an influential think tank, the Resolution Foundation, has proposed the replacement of…

Budgeting / Fiscal policy / PFM

Ending the Confusion on Medium-Term Expenditure Ceilings

- April 13, 2023 - Marc Robinson comment

Expenditure ceilings are a key instrument for achieving the objectives of medium-term budgeting. This is why the question of how to set appropriate and workable expenditure ceilings has been a major focus of public financial…