About this online course

• Is your organisation interested in enforcing their ex post evaluation function?
• How can you manage evaluation activities better?
• How can you ensure high-quality ex post evaluations?
• How can evaluation results provide the evidence required for decision-making, and help to improve policies and programmes?

This online course will answer all these questions. Specifically, it will enhance your ability to design, manage and monitor the evaluations conducted by your organisation, irrespective of whether they are supported by EU funds.

Introductory Module: learn about key concepts of Better Regulation (BR) and how they are applied across the policymaking cycle. Learn how the BR tools are used in practice in the European Commission (EC). Discuss how Member States (MSs) implement the Better Regulation Agenda and gain insight into the challenges and pitfalls of different modalities.

Core Module: Learn how to ensure high-quality ex post evaluations. First, gain a foundation of good practices in ex post evaluation through the lessons learned from implementation of the BR Guidelines and Toolbox. Building on this foundation, gain insight into the pillars of a sound evaluation design (the intervention logic, evaluation criteria, evaluation questions and the evaluation matrix). Moreover, learn practical skills for managing evaluation studies and stakeholder engagement. Finally, learn about the latest developments and innovations in evaluation to help keep your evaluations state-of-the-art.

If you are confident of all the basics, and do not feel that you need any further training on it, you can register only for the Course.

What you will learn in this course:

• What the policy cycle is and what Better Regulation means in theory and practice.
• How MSs assess, monitor and evaluate legislation. What are the common pitfalls, what are the good practices?
• How to manage an ex post evaluation of a legal act; how to engage and consult stakeholders.
• What evaluation design methodologies you can choose from to evaluate legislation.
• What is state-of-the-art in ex post evaluation of legislation and what the future looks like.

Course methodology/highlights

The course will be led by experts who have decades of both research and practical experience in evaluation in an EU context and beyond.

The course delivery will combine interactive presentations, showcasing practical examples, quick polls to consolidate concepts and quick group exercises.

How will it help you?

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• evaluate the pros and cons of different evaluation methodologies and tools, and select the ones most relevant to your case;
• commission and manage meaningful evaluations and ensure the proper dissemination of results;
• better integrate evaluation into the policy and programming cycle so it is actually used;
• recognise and identify what makes a good-quality evaluation.

You will be given the slides, as well as additional learning material and online resources, to help you apply your new knowledge and skills to your work.

Target group

Public officials, civil servants and policy analysts who work in government or parliamentary institutions, in EU Member States or candidate countries, similar to the following:

• ‘Better Regulation’ committees / programmes
• centres for research and analysis
• bureaucracy reduction agencies
• budget offices
• councils for regulatory impact assessments