The Meta-Evaluation On Third Party Evaluation Of Public Service ——Take The Performance Evaluation Of Food Safety In GS Province In 2019 For An Example

As a kind of government governance tool,the third-party evaluation emerged in the 1980 s.Recently,the State Council,local governments and functional departments have gradually attached importance to the role of external evaluation,so as to strengthen the third-party evaluation,so as to promote the implementation of major policy decisions and improve the quality of public service.Nevertheless,the background of the third-party evaluation,an emerging evaluation model,in public service performance evaluation is facing a powerful gap between high attention and low reputation,which has prompted profound reflections among public service evaluation practitioners.Throughout the existing literature,while the third-party evaluation is highly regarded and praised,many skeptical voices and practical dilemmas are also at hand.Some scholars believe that being an external evaluation,the third-party evaluation can remedy the shortcomings of the traditional government’s internal self-evaluation,and play a role of supervision and balance;some scholars think that the third-party evaluation still has the problem of insufficient practice in China,which makes the third-party evaluation become a mere formality and a tool for the government to "show off".Facing diverse views on third-party evaluation in the academic community,how effective is it? Is it really possible to promote construction by evaluation and promote the quality of public services? This study will focus on the issue.Based on meta-evaluation theory,this study focuses on meta-evaluation analysis of the model of third-party evaluation of public services.Based on the accuracy and continuity of the third-party evaluation and the openness of the evaluation results,selecting “the Performance Evaluation of Food Safety in GS Province in 2019” as a case,using case study,questionnaire and interview methods to conduct a meta-evaluation analysis of such a typical commissioned third-party evaluation.The study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of the third-party evaluation in China,and to uncover the factors that influence them and the differences in perceptions of third-party evaluation among officials within the government.The core part of this study focuses on the accuracy,usefulness,appropriateness and feasibility of the third-party evaluation of public services based on the perspective of the agent and the perspective of the commissioner and the person being evaluated,within the framework of meta-evaluation analysis.Chapter 3 focuses on the meta-evaluation analysis of the third-party evaluation by using content analysis,participant observation and interview methods.It was found that although certain negative factors existed under each dimension,in general the accuracy,usefulness,appropriateness and feasibility of the performance evaluation of “the Performance Evaluation of Food Safety in GS Province in 2019” could be guaranteed.Based on the data obtained from the questionnaire and in-depth interviews,Chapter 4 analyses the perceived accuracy,feasibility,usefulness and appropriateness of the third-party evaluation by the evaluated respondents,i.e.the staff of the evaluated city（state）market supervision bureau,and the commissioners,i.e.the representatives of the commissioners,with the help of SPSS software;and analyses the factors influencing the accuracy,feasibility,usefulness and appropriateness of the third-party evaluation.The study found that the third-party evaluation was most advantageous in terms of practicality from the perspective of both the commissioner and the respondent,and slightly less so in terms of accuracy,appropriateness and feasibility.The higher the ranking,the higher the level of recognition of the feasibility of the evaluation.Based on the meta-evaluation analysis of different perspectives in the first two chapters,Chapter 5 analyses and diagnoses a series of key factors that affect the effectiveness of the third-party evaluation;on this basis,it proposes four countermeasures to optimize the practice of the third-party evaluation of public services,and proposes a set of meta-evaluation analysis criteria for optimizing the third-party evaluation of public services.On the basis of the four basic dimensions of accuracy,feasibility,appropriateness and usefulness,sixteen specific evaluation criteria are refined to provide a relatively complete evaluation of the role of the third-party evaluation in the public service performance evaluation system,and to provide ideas for the development of indicators under the meta-evaluation analysis criteria for third-party evaluation of public services in the future.The innovation of this study is in two main areas: first of all,with the help of meta-evaluation theory,it shifts from a purely internal and external perspective to a stakeholder and principal-agent perspective,emphasizing the re-evaluation and re-analysis of the third-party evaluation tools from the multidimensional perspective of different subjects in the overall work of the third-party evaluation.This not only closely integrates collaborative governance theory,stakeholder theory and principal-agent theory in the study of government performance governance,but also compensates for the lack of internal empirical data in the current academic research on the third-party evaluation of public services.Secondly,it optimizes the meta-evaluation analysis criteria applied to the third-party evaluation in the public service sector.This not only expands the research perspective of the third-party evaluation,but also represents an extended innovation of meta-evaluation theory in the field of public services.