EVALUATION AS A GOVERNANCE TOOL
Byzantine & Christian Museum of Athens
Auditorium Hall
22 Vasilissis Sofias Avenue, 106 75 Athens
The 3rd Annual Conference of the Hellenic Evaluation Society (HES) was successfully held on 30 October 2019, at the Byzantine & Christian Museum of Athens. This year’s conference, titled "Evaluation as a Governance Tool," aimed to foster public dialogue on how evaluation could become an integral part of governance and decision-making in the public sector.
The conference took place at a time when, at the national level, the evaluation community’s attention was focused on developments and initiatives related to the evaluation of public policies.
HES advocates that public policies based on objective evaluation findings can significantly contribute to national reform and development efforts. Evaluation can improve the effective utilisation of the country’s resources, serve as additional accountability assurance for taxpayers regarding resource use, and generate valuable knowledge about implemented policies and their outcomes.
However, evaluation is not always a fundamental part of policy design and governance. It has often been negatively perceived by the public, and institutional arrangements for conducting evaluations within the executive and legislative branches remain limited.
In a well-established institutional evaluation system, this function would be a fundamental component of the life cycle of public policies and programs. Evaluations would be conducted methodically, reliably, and systematically, with results utilised by policymakers and decision-makers and made publicly available to citizens. Successfully advancing strategic evaluation requires both technical and organisational changes as well as cultural shifts within public administration. It also necessitates legislative developments specific to evaluation and adequate horizontal integration of evaluation processes in public finance regulations and national policy planning frameworks.
The conference featured high-level officials from central government, public servants, representatives of evaluation units, ministries, regional and local government bodies, Greek evaluators, academics, and researchers as speakers and guests.
At the end of the conference, the HES Annual Awards for 2019 were announced in the categories:
- Best Applied Integrated Evaluation Methodology
- Optimal Utilisation of Proposed Evaluation Conclusions
CONFERENCE SESSIONS
The conference program was structured into three sessions:
1. Evaluation as a Governance Tool: Prospects for Reforms
2. Experience from Existing Practices, Mechanisms, and Evaluation Studies
3. Best Practices in Evaluation
PROGRAM OF THE 3rd ANNUAL HES CONFERENCE
PRESENTATIONS
OPENING – WELCOME ADDRESS
- Dimitra Ioannou, President of the Hellenic Evaluation Society
KEYNOTE SPEECH
- Aris Alexopoulos, "The State Evaluates Its Performance: Evaluation of Public Policies and Effective Governance"
SESSION 1 – EVALUATION AS A GOVERNANCE TOOL: PROSPECTS FOR REFORMS
- Thanasis Kontogeorgis, "Evaluation as a Prerequisite for Coherent Public Policies"
- Andreas Pottakis, "Evaluation as a Condition for Policy Design, Assessment, and Appraisal"
- Yiannis Selimis, "Evaluation and Risk Management"
SESSION 2 – EXPERIENCE FROM EXISTING PRACTICES, MECHANISMS, AND EVALUATION STUDIES
- Georgia Vikatos, "The National Mechanism for Social Inclusion and the Integration of the Evaluation Dimension"
- Nancy Routzouni, "Evaluation and Innovation: An Open Participatory Model for Evaluating Public Policies"
- Vivian Galata, "Discrimination in the Labor Market and Governance: The Case of Albanian Migrant Workers in Athens"
- Evi Kopanaki, "Evaluation in Higher Education and the Framework Set by the Accreditation of the Hellenic Quality Assurance and Accreditation Agency (HQA)"
SESSION 3 – BEST PRACTICES IN EVALUATION
- Athanasios Sakalidis, "Analysis of Predictive Indicators for the Greek Economy – Case Study: The SESMA Barometer"
- Anna Kanakaki, "Recovery Action Plan for the Municipality of Marathon"
- Penny Strapatsaki, "Assessment of the Current State of DRG Evaluation in Europe"
