COST 20112 Platform of policy evaluation community for improved EU policies and better acknowledgement

Project framework: COST Association

Team coordinator of the Institute of Economic Sciences: Jovan Zubović, PhD

Duration of the project: 2021-2025

Description:

The Action PROFEEDBACK aims to foster the networking of the policy evaluation community at EU level, raise awareness on the importance of evaluation policy research and improve its impact on policy-making. The Platform, following a bottom-up and open approach, will gather researchers and professionals from various scientific fields and sectors to present and evaluate theories, topics, tools and methods of policy evaluation. Results of the Europe-wide assessment of good practices will provide direct and high-quality inputs for national and EU bodies responsible for policy evaluation.

Policy evaluation is a key tool in understanding, developing and modernizing EU policies, thus there is a growing demand for EU-wide and high-quality evaluation services. The main challenge is that currently there is no bottom-up platform for European researchers and professionals working in policy evaluation. They have limited possibilities to discuss common problems, assess country-specific practices and share their knowledge in a mutually beneficial and effective way.

PROFEEDBACK aims to tackle this challenge with an innovative, complex, cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary approach:

• analyzing the theoretical and methodological questions of evaluation policy research putting a special focus on Cohesion Policy,
• enriching scientific research of policy evaluation and addressing new challenges,
• harmonizing fragmented approaches to set the research agenda and to get a common understanding,
• contributing to the capacity building of the policy evaluation community,
• involving national and EU policy-makers and civil society to contribute to evidence-based policy-making,