The Policy Cycle

3.2 Appraisal and evaluation are essential activities to support evidence-based decision making at all stages of the policy development cycle.

3.3 The process for policy development varies across organisations and generally incorporates a set of policy tests1 which are used to challenge policy development and delivery. The structure of most approaches moves from developing a rationale for intervention, through identification of objectives, to option appraisal. Monitoring and evaluation play a role before, during and after implementation, with the aim of improving implementation and building the evidence for future interventions.

3.4 The elements of the policy cycle are often described as Rationale, Objectives, Appraisal, Monitoring, Evaluation and Feedback, or ROAMEF for short, as presented in Figure 2.

Figure 2. The Policy Cycle

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1 Policy tests are a set of questions used in policy development to consider a policy's expected outcomes, the reason why government is intervening, the strength of the evidence base, whether a policy is innovative and whether it can be implemented. See Department for Education for an example of policy tests.