RURAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME 2014-2020 – LOMBARDY REGION, ITALY

EX ANTE EVALUATION

Davide Zanon26th september, 2013

First time for EARDF in the family of the Structural Funds common rules for evaluation (but specific guidelines by the European Evaluation Network for Rural Development)

Italy: regional programmes (each programme ex ante evaluation) needs of coordination for the Partnership Agreement (summary of all ex ante evaluations needed)

Lombardy (EARDF): Programming started in September 2012 (before then only activities of data gathering for the situation analysis)

2 Best practices:- ex ante evaluator chosen in july 2012 (before the beginning of programming!)- Adequate resources assigned for the evaluation excercise (but let me confirm at the end of

the work…)

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KEY POINTS

Formally (terms of reference): nothing more than what the regulation says

In practice: a role of support, involvement in the programming process (but independent, of course!)

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WHAT THE MANAGING AUTHORITY ASKED

Reads the documents, gives opinions and recommendations

Participates at meetings, talks with stakeholder, contributes to writing documents

Gruppo CLAS

More chances to really contribute to improving the quality of the programming process and the quality of the RDP.

There is not always a process where the evaluator makes reccomendations and the programme developer decide the responses.

Evaluator and Programme developer work together (but the evaluator does not play the role of the technical assistance!)

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WHAT HAS BEEN DONESTEP What the PD did (is doing) What the evaluator did (is

doing)

Situation analisys Gather data, organise data and fill in context indicator system

Help PD in gathering data, organising data, and verifying the completeness of data and of context indicators

SWOT analysis and needs assessment

Organise thematic groups of experts with the aim of fill out the SWOT analysis (starting with a proposed SWOT) and the needs assessment

Help PD in analyzing the results of the groups and the contributions of the participantsSuggest the PD to use a specific tecnique to order the indications of participant

Strategy and intervention logic

Identification of objectives, specification of intervention logic, choice of articles of the Regulation to apply,

Verification of the logical framework, from the articles chosen and the connected outputs to the results and objectives

Allocation of resources (currently the hypothesis is that the budget should be the same as that of the period 2007-2013)

Establishment of targets for output, results, milestones (we are sure that the most challenging task for the evaluation will be verifying the indicator system, the adequacy of target values and the suitability of milestones)

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WHAT HAS TO BE DONE

We are now arranging for a system, on an excel file, that will be useful to calculate target values on the basis of different hypothesis on the allocation of budget among measures

Identification of the human resources and specification of the administrative structure envisaged for the management of the programme.

A new task for evaluators, very important in Italy where often there has been lack of administrative capacity to manage programmes

Via Lattuada, 20 - 20135 MILANOTel. 02.5418431 - Fax 02.55192205d.zanon@gruppoclas.it

Via San Basilio 64 - 00187 ROMA Tel. 06.48905892 - Fax 06.42012213

Contacts:

http://www.gruppoclas.com

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION