Evaluation of public policies in Portuguese regional development context – a preliminary methodological approach supported in north region

The evaluation of territorial programs and plans has been gaining importance, both in political-institutional speeches and practices and in academic reflections. In Portugal, the structure of planning, operacionalized on a vast number of quite recent instruments, requires an effort of articulation in the guidelines to various scales (from European until the municipal) and of the various fields (some sectoral, others, of more transversal nature). The development of monitoring systems, as well as the generalisation of the evaluation procedures, answer to the need of articulation between policies and support the strategic nature that is planning today. As a part of the Research Project SPOTIA - Sustainable Spatial Policy Orientations and Territorial Impact Assessment - Contribution to Portuguese context' (Centre of Geographical Studies – University of Lisbon to the Ministry of Science and Technologies), this paper aims to present an example of the first outputs of this research on the analysis of coherence between three different instruments planning, such as the National Policy Planning (PNPOT), a guiding document of national level, the Regional Spatial Plan to Northern Territory (PROT-Norte), the regional guidance document, and the Regional Operational Programme (PO-Norte), the regional program associated to a financing plan and program implementation. The analysis of coherence between these documents is not only between their general, strategic and specific objectives, but also by the indicator system assessment of each document. With this analysis we can reach the domains that are constantly, or not, present in these documents. In this context, a first essay of a methodological approach on evaluation of public policies in Portuguese context will be presented.