Impact and Effectiveness of Constitutional Advice Evaluated
In order to know whether advisory bodies do function effectively it would be practical to have an overview of at least the follow-up of their (constitutional) advice. One would expect that advisory bodies have—and make public—such overviews themselves.
This seems not always be the case and certainly not always in an extensive way, at least from the perspective of an external observer. Otherwise, it must be rather difficult to measure that effectiveness and impact, as becomes clear from e.g. evaluations from the functioning of the NHRI, the Scientific Council for governmental policy, the Council for Public Administration and the Data Protection Authority, as will now shortly be illustrated by some findings from these evaluations or reactions there upon.As mentioned before, evaluations of the NHRI were carried out in 2015/2017.[226] The researchers assessed the effectiveness of the Institute. As is the case in evaluations of other autonomous administrative bodies (zbos) as well, it appeared to be difficult to determine to what extent the legal aims of the NHRI had been realized and to what extent the outcome would be due to the efforts of the Institute. For that reason, the researchers involved in their assessment the way in which the NHRI arranged its working methods in order to function as effective as possible.[227] The researchers concluded e.g. that there were possibilities to increase the effectiveness by paying ‘more attention to evaluation and monitoring of the effect of decisions, advice, research, and communications/reports’.[228]
The legal based Scientific Council for Governmental Policy was evaluated externally in 20 1 8.[229] In short, the external evaluation commission observed inter alia that there can be impact in the form of (social) media-attention for the WRR (e.g.
when a communication stimulates public debate and contributes to reflection on a certain policy-practice) but also impact by effects on policy and legislation (e.g. when recommendations are adopted). The commission noticed that the WRR has evaluation reports of each separate project in which the policy impact of projects is ‘obviously’ addressed, as well as of effect-reports in which is addressed what has been the attention for the projects in (social) media and parliamentary documents.[230] Furthermore the evaluation commission gives as its opinion: ‘A general opinion on the policy impact of the WRR-products is hard to give. Policy effectiveness is dependent of many factors which make the measuring a very perilous undertaking.’ It then continues that above all, the nature of the WRR-products makes that their effect on policy will only become clear on the long term. ‘The cabinet responses to the reports of the WRR are just a first indication of the effect in policy and legislation. De WRR-project evaluations respond to that later on, but the reported effects of each project are different and are not ready for aggregation. By reason of proxy-indicators, such as the number of WRR-records in Parliamentary documents (...), the evaluation commission concludes that at least the policy attention for the WRR has been increased in the researched period.’Concerning the evaluation of the Council for Public Administration (CPA), the researchers conclude in their report from 2021 that the CPA has a solid base for exercising its legal tasks and for having realized it’s targets. From this base they see possibilities for increasing the impact of the advice of the CPA.[231] The researchers indicate that the way the CPA fulfils its role as advisor is supported by the majority of the groups aimed at. According to the researchers the advice of the CPA deal with the right themes and are appreciated as qualitative thorough and do fit to the policy agenda, what leads to governmental and parliamentary support.
Quite another thing appears to be the political administrative and social impact of the advice among the groups aimed at. The evaluation points out that that impact is still ‘relatively limited’.[232] Then the evaluation continues: ‘The CPA doesn’t work in its advisory processes straightforward to the realisation of the aimed impact of its advice and realises this impact with varying success.’ This conclusion is regarded by the CPA as the most important one of the evaluations.[233] The CPA regards the last two recommendations—enlargement of its network and further improvement of its strategic communication—as important additional instruments in order to improve the impact of the advice of the Council.With regard to the functioning of the Data Protection Authority, independent research has been carried out by KPMG in 2020. It concluded among others that the DPA is not able to fulfil its legal based tasks well, for reasons of lack of budget and capacity. It concluded more specifically—among others—that elementary functions for a supervisor do lack, like risk analysis, ongoing prioritizing and effect measuring.[234]
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