H Report. National Rural Network’s Support to the Evaluation of RDPs. Good Practice Workshop, November 30 - December 01, 2017
2017
43p.
What can NRNs do to support RDP evaluation? One of the questions raised in the first part of the workshop was related to the clarification of the role of NRNs in supporting the evaluation of RDPs. Teresa Marques, European Commission, DG AGRI, Unit C.4 underlined, at the beginning of the GPW, that the only legal requirement for NRNs concerning evaluation consists of support provided for the sharing and dissemination of evaluation findings (See section 1.2 of the report). This support like other activities of the NRN contributes to the NRN’s objectives of ‘improving the quality of implementation of RDPs’ and of ‘informing the broader public and potential beneficiaries on rural development policy and funding opportunities’. The purpose of the evaluation is similar, confirmed Charalampos Kassimis,(General Secretary of Agricultural Policy and Management of European Funds), at the opening address (See section 1.1 of the report). He also noted that ‘the knowledge generated by the evaluation shall be opened at EU and RDP level in order to improve the competitiveness of the evaluation market, and the whole evaluation community and suggests that it is here that NRNs together with the Evaluation Helpdesk can play a significant role. Hannes Wimmer (Team Leader of the European Evaluation Helpdesk for Rural Development) in his introduction, mentioned that its main objective is to improve the evaluation of RDPs (See section 1.1 of the report). There is potential for the development of synergies between the Helpdesk and the NRNs as the activities are in principle very similar. The Helpdesk can provide relevant support to those NRNs who implement evaluation-related activities. The following potential examples of NRNs' tasks with an evaluation-related focus were identified: collection of examples of RDP evaluation (data & information collection); facilitation of thematic and analytical exchanges (linked to the evaluation of RDPs); provision of evaluation related trainings and capacity building (e.g. for LAGs, etc.); provision of networking on evaluation (e.g. evaluators’ networks, etc.); sharing, disseminating and communicating on monitoring and evaluation findings; participation in and contribution to the European Evaluation Helpdesk for Rural Development activities. According to the outcomes of the Evaluation Helpdesk’s NRN survey, presented by Jela Tvrdonova (Evaluation Manager of the Evaluation Helpdesk), the NRNs support to the evaluation of RDPs is diverse and goes beyond the legal requirements (See section 1.3 of the report). Many examples of evaluation-related NRN activities that are planned or are already being implemented in the Member States were presented. The range of activities was illustrated by the practical examples of the Italian and Portuguese NRNs presented on day one of the GPW (See section 2.1 of the report).
Seminar proceedings, Report
DEVELOPMENT POLICY: SUSTAINABLE & TERRITORIAL DEVELOPMENT, rural development, programme evaluation, evaluation technique
rural development, programme evaluation, evaluation technique