Evaluation of public policies is the review and assessment of values and results of the promulgation and implementation of the policies. To realize the policies, they are institutionalized into legislation and regulations. Thus, the review and assessment of policies are often associated with assessment of legislation concerned to see how they work and whether they conform to demands.

Public policies are not only reflected in legal document but also in programmes, plans and orientations of the State. That is why, assessment of public policies will be an overall review of State’s decisions (both at central and local administrations) in solving an urgent issue in State management. The assessment will not only on the policies’ content but also of the process of implementation to put forth suitable measures for revision of the policies to achieve expected results.

Though assessment of policies is an important step in the process of policy making, in Viet Nam, some policies have not yet been properly assessed because: first, understanding of policy assessment is still simple. Second, competent authorities (policy-making entities or implementing agencies)  have paid little attention to assessment of policies and have not included it into their programmes of action; third, policy assessment is only conducted when some “problems” crop up during the implementation; forth, there has been no criteria for policy assessment in a scientific manner; firth, sometimes it is a one-way assessment of state agencies without accounting for feedback from the public and the target groups and sixth, there is little funding for policy assessment.

To make the assessment of public policies an essential part in the process of policy-making, it is necessary to implement the following solutions: first, to make policy assessment a compulsory undertaking of some important policies; second, to set up a system of criteria for full and accurate policy assessment; third, to take into account public opinions, feedback and aspiration of people to identity constraints in policy making and implementation; fourth, to organize independent assessment groups including evaluation experts from government agencies and non-state sectors who conduct independent assessment and fifth, to earmark satisfactory amount of fund for policy assessment./.