Action oriented strategic planning: The concepts of infrastructure and functional domains

The problem is how to translate limited and uncertain knowledge about the future environment into operational strategic policy decisions. Because the strategic policy decisions must be made with a long time perspective in mind (10 to 10 years), planners tend to formulate strategies which are overly broad. A solution to the broad and uncertain approach is to employ a system that relys upon the use of the infrastructure. When the infrastructure is divided into permanent and complete societal functions, then specific opportunities can be presented to the organization. Examples of functional domains that may be relevant to strategic long-range planning are: industrial capabilities, pieces of legislation, regulation and training. Our knowledge about evolving world trends is usually available in functional terminology (i.e., the evolving “information society”, the “leisure society”, the “energy crisis”, and the “food crisis”, etc.) Knowledge about the future behavior of the Functional Domains may enable organizations such as governments and/or corporations, to create the required infrastructure for capitalizing on possible opportunities.     

The three faces of evaluation

Program evaluation can be used for three purposes: to learn about a program's operations and effects, to control the behavior of those responsible for program implementation, and to influence the responses of outsiders in the program's political environment. Most agencies fail to take full advantage of all three faces of evaluation. They begin their evaluation programs too late; they assign evaluation responsibilities to staffs which lack the requisite skills; or they yield to temptations to distort or suppress evaluation findings. The case of the evaluation of civil service reform demonstrates how these multiple purposes can be pursued together with constructive results. It also suggests several lessons of more general relevance.