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The article examines the management evaluation of intergovernmental personnel programs in the public administration sector in the U.S. Program performance at all levels of the intergovernmental system would benefit from improved understanding of the variety of indirect management techniques and their associated implications. Perhaps the most realistic and valuable metaphor for the evaluation of intergovernmental programs is that this activity itself become part of a broader societal learning system, rather than a one-shot, clear-cut assessment of success or failure. If this metaphor of learning is appropriate, and if key public officials can be convinced to take it seriously, then program evaluation can become a constructive, long-term catalyst for change.

The article analyses the increasing participation of economists in government services in the U.S. Most of these economists do technical work such as gathering and interpreting wage statistics in the Labor Department and forecasting future crop prices in the Agriculture Department. It is the work of these economists that is most likely to affect the scope and shape of public programs. Some studies show that, compared to other social scientists, economists are disproportionately represented. It is not clear precisely how many of these economists are involved with analyzing policy, but economists do hold positions which give them the potential to influence public policy decisions. Though economists are well represented in government, it is difficult to know how much influence they have had on public policy. Economics stands more for a particular way of looking at policy alternatives than for particular policies. Whatever the extent of their influence, economists' disproportionate representation in government suggests that those interested in public policy should understand their characteristic mode of thinking.

The article comments on federal civil service in the U.S. The federal civil service is now experiencing its first major retrenchment in forty years. The active buildup of the Vietnam and Great Society years has been replaced by job freezes and Reductions-in Force. The 1970s have ushered in a change in federal priorities. Whereas the Johnsonian Great Society emphasized social change, equity, responsiveness, and representativeness, President Richard Nixon's New Federalism appears to foreshadow a reduced federal social programming role and an administrative model stressing economy, efficiency, productivity, and executive control. Yet just as the Administration is taking stock of the federal social program inventory and administrative apparatus, so it is important for those committed to a different conception of the rate of federal intervention in promoting social change to look back and assess the federal experience during the last decade in an attempt to help define new and more viable strategies for change.