Evaluation of public policies

This project combines the evaluation of chosen public policies with workshops for Ukrainian evaluators. The report summing up the results of the evaluation will be presented during a closing seminar.

An evaluation of public policies almost does not exist in Eastern Europe. In Central Europe, particularly in the new EU member states, this situation changed when the requirement of evaluating projects financed with EU funds went into force. The requirements of the evaluation itself, however, does not help to understand the usefulness of the process. This phenomenon is particulary noticeable on the local level. This way, the evaluation from the source of important information for the development of the region becomes just yet one more bothersome point of the grant agreement which has to be executed.

On top of that, the situation of Ukrainian local governments is complicated enough. Local authorities are practically dependent on the central government, which is shown in the custom of negotiating the amount of income from the central budget being transfered to the local budgets, among other things.

The prospective and expected reform of the local government is supposed to give local authorities executive and financial independence. This is one intention of legislators. On the other hand, an association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union is a forecast of opening European financial sources for Ukrainian local governments. Since it is a common practise in the EU, this opening will be followed by the requirement of the evaluation of projects implemented by local governments.

It is therefore important to prepare local governments as well as Ukrainian evaluators. It is worth to help local governments to understand the meaning of evaluation and how it may help to improve the process of decision making. On the other side, local governments need evaluators who will be able to plan and conduct evaluation and will help to interprete the results.

This project is inspired by Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin – sociologist, evaluator and researcher of the process of the Ukrainian transformation.

This project is implemented with the support of the Poland-Canada Democracy Support Program.