The text describes the principles, directives, characteristics, instruments, agents and major operational procedures of the new Brazilian Higher Education Evaluation System (Sinaes). It argues that Sinaes may in fact be considered a System in that it integrates not only the evaluative spaces within the Ministry of Education, and in so doing organizes them around one single conception, in close connection with the higher education policies, but also integrates the evaluation instruments with each other and, at the same time, with the information instruments (higher education census, national faculty data base, national data base of institutions and undergraduate programs). This systemic view of evaluation allows for the generation, management and dissemination of indicators and information of great interest to institutions, programs, evaluators, and to the public in general.