Continuous education remains a cornerstone of Blomeyer & Sanz’s professional commitment, a value put into practice last Friday, 7 November 2025, when part of the team attended the XXII Seminar “The Evaluation Space for Public Policy in Spain”. The event, held at the Escuela de Gobierno of the Complutense University within its Master’s Program on Evaluation, brought together a diverse community of institutional representatives, researchers, and evaluation professionals.
The full-day training offered participants the chance to delve into the evolving landscape of public policy evaluation through a combination of presentations, roundtables, and practical workshops. Discussions explored the current state of the field, anticipated challenges, and strategies to mitigate emerging risks, while also offering valuable opportunities to connect with colleagues across the sector.
The seminar opened with a keynote by Fernando Fantova, chairperson of Besaldi, the Basque Country’s public evaluation organism for employment and inclusion policies. His presentation sparked lively debate on long-standing tensions in the discipline: methodological rigor versus flexibility, standardisation versus specialisation, and the increasingly pressing question of whether AI represents a promising tool or a high-risk technological gamble, which put together with increasing geopolitical tensions, pictures a turbulent future.
Later, María Bustelo, director of the Master’s Program, addressed several concerns she believes threaten the integrity of evaluation practice today. Among them was the risk of bureaucratic capture, which occurs at the moment when the evaluation is caught up in protocols, norms, and procedures and becomes rigid, routine, and uncritical. When the emphasis shifts excessively towards factual indicators, evaluation risks transforming into a confirmation mechanism, reinforcing the very same system it was meant to question.
By the end of the day, discussions converged on a nuanced conclusion: while evaluation remains a powerful tool to strengthen public management, align organisational priorities, improve transparency, and build institutional capacities, it must guard against the pitfalls of evaluation capture and bureaucratisation. Finally, maintaining evaluation’s critical function requires constant vigilance, reflective practice, and a willingness to question the frameworks in which evaluators operate, always being aware of the power it holds when defining what constitutes success and what doesn’t.
