Monitoring and evaluation are crucial to the State Planning and have had a growing space in the academic field. The constant interest on those themes is highlighted through their presence in different forums, meetings and nets of specialists that study them, along with the governments demand for them. The present article highlights, in a systematic and analytical way, the importance of public policy evaluation process, organizing information about the conceptual aspects, and the state of art of these themes along with examples about concrete practices of evaluation in different governmental areas. The article is divided in five sections: in the first one it is presented the public policy evaluation concept and its main characteristics. In the second section we analyze different types of evaluation. In the third section we present different evaluation uses. In the fourth section we present the stage of evaluation in Brazil along with some concrete examples. In the end we present some conclusions and recommendations about public policies evaluation.
public policies; evaluation; monitoring