Comparing outcomes profiles of public programmes with ELECTRE assistance instead of observing evolution of a synthetic impact index: illustration of the benefits of a multicriteria evaluation approach

International audienceThis paper will show how we could ameliorate the quality of public policies and programmes monitoring and ongoing evaluations by using established outranking methods and ELECTRE software assistance. The craftiness is to take the outcomes of programmes for each period and to elaborate the outcomes multidimensional profile, and then to compare these profiles year after year without having the need to calculate and to observe the evolution of the corresponding synthetic impact index. This article outlines all of the net advantages of comparing annual outcomes profiles rather than the evolution of the aggregated index. We aim to show that the outcomes profiles can be compared by the same outranking methods as those used in the case of several options or projects compared during the same year. The well-known ELECTRE software assistance is used