Contractualization is one of the key elements of New Public Management. This paper assumes that contract efficacy requires conditions that need to be somehow evaluated themselves and need to be correlated to the quality of the contract itself, quality that have to be related to the performance expected by the contract. However, the delivery of the contracted outcomes does not depend only on the arrangements explicit in the contract; on the contrary, the delivery is subject to several variables, most of them difficult to be controlled and most of them hardly would be part of a simple model for evaluation (even considering that some could be detected and included in the model). That why the unit of analysis should be focused on the contractual experience and not simply in the contract, what implies that one addresses to questions related to the contract, to the contracted, to the contractor and to the context in general terms. In this sense, the organizational culture has to be taken into account, not as an unbreakable condition or an indestructible obstacle to establish an evaluation culture, but as an environment that can influence the results and a set of values that can be changed by observation of good experiences.

This paper is structured in three main points: a) first, a proposition of a simple conceptual model for evaluation of contractual experiences; b) second, the general model will be put to the test as it will be applied to some selected recent occurred contractual experiences; and c) third, some questions will be raised based on the results of the application of the model, towards the learning process involved in the management of outcomes and in the institutional evaluation. In doing so, it is expected that the model may be improved and can be turned into a reliable tool to be used in specific requirements. The test of the model aims to demonstrate its feasibility and to provide general vision of the actual contractual experiences based in the evaluation of a substantial database about management policies for the period 1995-2002. Hence, it is important to remark, it is not an evaluation of a particular organization or management system or yet people.

It is expected that bringing up some important critical issues about the early Brazilian contractual experience, one can draw some learning rules useful for the designing and making of effective public management policies.