Development of the Evaluation Community in Romania

1. GOVERNMENT OF ROMANIAMINISTRY OF PUBLIC FINANCEMANAGING AUTHORITY FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT FRAMEWORKEvaluation Central Unit Development of the Evaluation Community in Romania

2. Evaluationdriver • Chapter 28 – Financial control • Chapter 21 – Regional policy • Political criteria – increasing the accountability of the Public Administration; enhancing policy formulation • European Commission • Civil Society/media

3. The strategy of public policy • To develop a simple and efficient system for formulation of public policies • Setting the structure and the role of each public policy document • Defining the hierarchy between the documents • Defining the link between national and sectoral public policies • Introduction of impact analysis of the public policies • It is coordinated by the Secretariat General of the Government

4. Raising Awareness on evaluation • Action Plan for raising awareness on evaluation • May – June 2006 • 6 conferences on evaluation for specific target groups • Focus on utility of evaluation, international experience with evaluation, EU requirements concerning evaluation • The booklet “Evaluation – essential component in the European process of public interventions formulation and implementation” • Questionnaire elaborated and distributed

5. Private market development – first steps • 35 potential evaluators selected from local consultancy companies, universities and NGOs • Purpose: Romanian organisations in the private, academic and civil society sectors will be able to, in the coming years: • tender for evaluation contracts commissioned by the European Commission, the Ministry of Public Finance, and other Government Ministries and public bodies • successfully carry out the evaluation contracts to qualitative standards.

6. Others to be done in 2006 • Evaluation Working Group for Structural Instruments • Designing the model of interim evaluation • Steering the ex-ante evaluation of the operational programmes • Evaluation standards • Evaluation procedures, including the setting up of the evaluation functions inside the managing authorities • Translation in Romanian and distribution of the Guide for evaluation of socio-economic development programmes • THE NATIONAL EVALUATION STRATEGY

7. Steps to developing the National Evaluation Strategy Principal stages: • Assessment of the Romanian evaluation culture (to mid-July) • Engage in consultations with main stakeholders • Drafting the National Evaluation Strategy (based on best-practice from other MS • Disseminate draft for comment (to end August • Finalise and launch NES (September)

8. Assessment of the Romanian evaluation culture • Assessment against EU “9+3” criteria (identified in “International Atlas on Evaluation”). The criteria include: • Evaluation takes place in many policy domains • There is a supply of domestic evaluators in different discipline • There is a professional organisation of evaluators • There is a degree of institutionalisation of evaluation in Government • There is a degree of institutionalisation of evaluation in Parliament • There is a pluralism of institutions or evaluators performing evaluations within each policy domain • There is an evaluation function within the Supreme Audit Institution. The three additional criteria for candidate countries are: • There is monitoring capacity • There is diversity of evaluation: strategy, policy, programme, projects • There is an information flow within government relating to evaluation.

9. The National Evaluation Strategy • Assessment will be of both demand and supply side: • level of evaluation activity and capacity at both the local and central levels of governments, for all publicly-funded interventions, regardless of funding source (e.g. EU, national budget, etc.) • Level of evaluation activity and capacity within the academic, civil society and private sectors • Will identify gaps in evaluation knowledge and capacity • Will outline some potential policy choices to be further elaborated in the NES draft document

10. National Evaluation Strategy • The draft NES will take into account: • the “Strategy for improving the public policy planning and formulation system at central level’’ • Assessment of the Romanian evaluation legal framework • Evaluation models proposed for the 2007-2013 NSRF and OP process • Twinning support to Parliament on impact assessment of legal acts • Taking into account external environment, and experience of other EU Member States, the NES will primarily focus on development of evaluation culture rather than on systems.

11. The National Evaluation Strategy - This will include: • Roadmap of further evaluation capacity building • Training, guidelines, national “society of Romanian evaluators” • Liaison with the wider evaluation community (civil society, Universities, etc.) • Other capacity building activities • By 2010, NES should outline the milestones to develop systems for incorporation of evaluation practices into all publicly-funded programmes

12. The National Evaluation Strategy - This will include: • Roadmap of further evaluation capacity building • Training, guidelines, national “society of Romanian evaluators” • Liaison with the wider evaluation community (civil society, Universities, etc.) • Other capacity building activities • By 2010, NES should outline the milestones to develop systems for incorporation of evaluation practices into all publicly-funded programmes

13. Implementation of the NES PHARE 2005 – €2m • “Development of a Professional Evaluation Community” able to initiate, perform and use evaluations – €1m • Target group • Public administration • Evaluation firms / evaluators • Support organizations – professional organizations/networks, academic environment • Activities: • Evaluation guidelines, procedures and standards • Ethics codes • Developing competences – establishing evaluation curricula, training activities

14. Implementation of the NES • “Evaluation Facility” – €1m • Main objective: encouraging public bodies to initiate and use evaluations of their own interventions • Secondary objective: know-how transfer to the indigenous evaluation market • MACSF ECU will be highly involved in the implementation, quality assurance activities and supporting the implementation of the evaluation recommendations