Public policies and projects brought innumerable benefits but also had unintended detrimental effects on citizen. In spite of the good intention, Public interventions have resulted in the disruption of social and communal harmony, the loss of human li...
Public policies and projects brought innumerable benefits but also had unintended detrimental effects on citizen. In spite of the good intention, Public interventions have resulted in the disruption of social and communal harmony, the loss of human livelihood and welfare, and the destruction of quality of life. These and other consequences can negate the positive benefits of public programs.
Welfare impacts are the impacts of developmental interventions on quality of life, especially on the social vulnerables’ welfare. The impacts of development interventions take different forms. While significant benefits flow in form different development actions, there is also a need to identify and evaluate the negative externalities associated with them. Such impacts not only need to be identified and measured but also need to be managed in such a way that the positive externalities are maximized and the negative externalities are minimized.
In fact, there is no impact assessment named Welfare Impact Assessment in the world. This is the brand new concept in policy analysis. It has based upon the premise that the disadvantaged groups are more vulnerable than the average citizen and they have some different kinds of needs from other citizen. Welfare Impact Assessment focus on the quality of life dimension of welfare, and seek to identify the impacts on the social weak who benefits and who loses. Therefore Welfare Impact Assessment can be defined in terms of efforts to assess or estimate, in advance, the welfare consequences that are likely to follow specific policy actions, and specific government actions.
WIA is a two-stage process, the first stage not only being an Screening which must be conducted to determine if there is a potential differential welfare impact but also Feedback which must be conducted to improve the public interventions by planning organizations themselves. If there is enough large potential differential welfare impact, a professional full WIA must then be carried. The first stage is implemented by planning department and project management department bureaucrats. But the second stage is progressed by both internal and external impact assessment experts.
Based on the first stage prototype manual of the WIA, we assessed the welfare impacts of four projects in Seoul. One is for promoting traditional market place in Seoul, the other is for developing the slums. Besides there are a municipal plan and construction project of a driveway along the Han River.
After evaluating the municipal plan and projects, the study finds the limits and problems of the first stage prototype manual of the WIA and shows the recommendations for institutionalizing the WIA. It also suggests some issues that need to review and discuss to improve the WIA.