L’évaluabilité des politiques publiques locales : une application aux Villes et Territoires Intelligents

For more than 20 years, the evaluation of public policies has been omnipresent in the discourse of public players. However, there has been little work or research into its implementation, particularly in the local public sector. In order to make progress in this field, one of the challenges is to examine the conditions under which public policies can be evaluated. The aim is to help overcome the current disconnect between theory and discourse and the reality of evaluation practices. Our approach is to propose an analysis focusing on the organisational and methodological dimensions of the process. The success of 'Smart City' public policies and their promise to create public value provide an interesting case study. Action research carried out within Angers Loire Métropole to support the local authority in evaluating its 'Smart Territory' policy has enriched the framework for analysing the conditions for evaluability initially proposed, by identifying a number of criteria to be taken into account, likely to encourage the institutionalisation and appropriation of the approach and, ultimately, the quality of the evaluation process.