In order to assess whether it is possible to produce relevant data about the effectiveness of social policies in Argentina, 16 social policy programs were studied in an exploratory manner referring to five different capacities (1) the quality of the planning and design of intervention to achieve the desired effects; (2) the quality of the information system for the monitoring, production and archiving of information; (3) the planned evaluation strategy; (4) the strategy adopted by the actors to assure participation during the different stages of monitoring and evaluation, and (5) the resources allocated to carry out the evaluation.