Konferencja: New Methods for Cohesion Policy Evaluation: Promoting Accountability and Learning

Do you think evaluation methods are boring or technical?  Do you think accountability is something for bureaucrats?
This conference aims to prove that evaluation methods are crucial to public policy making and particularly important in Cohesion Policy.  How do we know that our programmes work?  Do we know why? How can we make them work better? Yes, bad evaluations can be boring; but good evaluations can help answer these questions.  Debating the findings of good evaluations should be an essential element of democratic accountability, letting the public know how taxpayers' money has been spent.
What is a good evaluation?  Based on experience, a good evaluation is one in which the question is clear and the method is designed to answer the question.  This conference will disseminate some good practices and debate some methodological questions which have been exercising the evaluation and policy community in recent years:

• How to capture the effects of interventions, policies and programmes?
• What are the "right" methods?
• Are certain methods more "right" for different policy areas?
• What is the right balance between qualitative and quantitative methods?  How can the "rigour" of both be improved?

The conference programme is taking shape and the speakers will be included in the programme as they are confirmed.  But some highlights:

• Fabrizio Barca of the Italian Treasury Ministry, author of the famous Barca Report, will chair a workshop on rigorous impact evaluation using counterfactuals.  He recommended the widespread use of this method, but does it work for all policy areas?
• Andreas Kopp of the World Bank, chapter author of the World Development report, will chair a group looking at how to enhance performance and accountability for major infrastructure projects
• William P. Kittredge, Director of National Programs and Performance Evaluation in the US Department of Commerce will share his experience of indicators systems.  The conference will also hear the OECD's analysis of indicators to measure performance from Lee Mizell.

Finally, the debate will focus on how we can turn good methods into practice that can deliver evidence for policy formulation.  What does the European Commission need to do?  What do Member States – at national and regional level need to do?  What are the challenges for evaluators?