A Comparison of Social Welfare Evaluation Systems between Korea and the United States

한국과 미국의 사회복지 평가체계의 특성비교

It has been 5 years since evaluation systems were introduced to the social welfare field in Korea. More than half of social welfare agencies (617 out of 1,267) were evaluated in the past two years. Most areas of the agencies were the target of an extensive evaluation in 2000. As "the Evaluation Era" has come, problems were raised especially regarding the Accreditation system of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare. More specifically, the problems were related to operation and management of the evaluation systems including the issue of evaluators' objectivity and fairness. In addition, evaluation costs have been too high to the government. The evaluation systems of OECD nations including the United States were quite different. These nations have used the Performance Measurement in order to secure the objectivity and the fairness. Although the quantity of information was limited compared to that of the Accreditation system, these nations have taken the lead in the governmental evaluation. In this context, this study compared social welfare evaluation systems between Korea and the United States. It presented the current status and problems of the Accreditation system of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, discussed the American Performance Measurement and its limitations, and compared the strengths and weaknesses of the two evaluation systems. In addition, this study suggested the strategies of Korean evaluation systems in the long term as well as in the short term.