Page 154 - JOURNAL OF LIBRARY SCIENCE IN CHINA 2018 Vol. 44

CHEN Geng & BAI Haohui / Inspection and reflection on the free open policy of public cultural venues in China: Centered on the public libraries 153

As a functional activity, policy evaluation can and should occur throughout the policy process,
rather than simply as the final stage (Anderson, 1990). Inspecting the effects, benefits and
efficiency of policies through policy evaluation cannot only provide a basis for policy adjustment,
improvement and change, but also promote the rational allocation of limited resources and reflect
the scientificity and democratization of public decision-making.
Scientific budget, fund supervision and performance evaluation (Xu & H.Q. Wang, 2012) are
necessary parts of any financial investment process management. But in addition to budgeting,
fund supervision and performance evaluation of free admission policy are still absent. The policy
requirements that strengthening supervision and establishing an evaluation system has been put
forward in the free admission policy of 2011. Moreover, the requirements for supervision and
inspection of free admission funds has been stipulated in The Interim Measures for Special Fund
Management promulgated of 2013. That is, the financial department and the cultural department
organize or entrust relevant institutions to conduct supervision or evaluation on the use of special
funds, then use the evaluation results as an important reference for future years, and require the
local financial and cultural departments to establish and improve a supervision mechanism and
performance evaluation system for the use of funds as well. However, the reality is that only
a small number of regions have formulated and implemented corresponding supervision and
evaluation systems, such as Hubei (2012), Henan (2013), Jiangxi (2015), etc. Moreover, the
implementation of real assessment is not optimistic in various places.
As a “from central to local” public interest-oriented policy design, the “absence” or “vacancy”
of the evaluation at the central level inevitably leads to the “softening” of assessment at the local
level. The lack of supervision and evaluation of special funds at the central level and most locals,
leads to the free admission policy gradually simplified into a fund subsidy policy. According to the
subsidy standard, the central and local governments provide “general-love” subsidies for the public
libraries and other venues which is free admission. The “midpoint” of the policy that funds are in
place transforms into the “end point” of the policy. There is a lack of supervision and management
of the use of funds, a lack of effective evaluation of the output results, a lack of reward and
punishment distribution through evaluation. A survey found that the effects of free admission
among public libraries are very different. If effective incentive and restraint mechanism are lacking
to respond to these differences, this will lead to a certain degree of “idleness phenomenon” and
enthusiasm reduction. In the long run, both the local government and the public cultural institutions
like public libraries will experience a state of “policy without feeling”.

3.2 Cause analysis

1) Simple and clear policy design is conducive to the comprehensive and rapid implementation
of the free admission policy, but the dynamic policy adjustment and optimization have not been
followed up in time.