Who Assesses the Whole? Responsibility and Capability for Cross-Boundary Policy Outcomes in Norway

Public policy objectives often depend on contributions from multiple ministries, administrative bodies and levels of government. Implementation duties may be clear even when responsibility or capacity to assess the overall outcome is not. This article examined eight purposively selected Norwegian policy, financial-management and performance-audit documents. Qualitative framework analysis separated objective setting, implementation, information production and integrated outcome assessment, and distinguished horizontal, vertical and intergovernmental relationships. The general-steering documents showed that the financial-management framework permitted outcome-oriented evaluation, although recent reviews identified weaknesses in information about resources and results. The long-term research plan paired a broad judgement about research quality with relevant but incomplete indicators and acknowledged wider assessment mechanisms and indicator limitations. The health documents showed that the Ministry of Health and Care Services held overall responsibility for national health policy and steered the state specialist-health-service chain. However, routine linked information about patient pathways across specialist and municipal health services was unavailable. The health-service coordination case therefore showed formal responsibility with an assessment-capability gap, not an assessment-responsibility gap. The findings did not establish prevalence or policy effects. Together, the cases illustrated why distributed implementation duties alone do not ensure capacity to assess and explain the overall outcome.