(NB: this text is also available in )

This seminar was organised by the OECD Trento Centre for Local Development.  It focused on disseminating information and tools for best practice evaluation approaches. The event is a part of the activities of the Evaluation Unit at the OECD LEED Trento Centre which aims to promote and develop culture of evaluation of local development strategies that promote entrepreneurship, local cohesion and good governance.

One of the main barriers to obtaining more of and a better quality of local development evaluation is insufficient capacity amongst local development professionals to understand the objectives and methodologies of evaluation.  Without this capacity we cannot expect a demand for good quality evaluation to emerge and thus drive forward better evaluation practice.  This was also one of the key findings of a major international conference on evaluation held by LEED in Vienna in 2002.

The one day seminar in Bratislava aimed at these and related issues with a special focus on the current situation in evaluating local development strategies implemented recently in Slovakia. They had the following objectives:

• to disseminate information on the evaluation concept and on the methodologies that need to be applied for effective evaluation of local development strategies.
• to gather information on support policy makers may require to introduce more robust evaluation approaches and on the potential role of the OECD in this area.
• to bring together evaluation experts and seminar participants to discuss selected case study programmes and how they could best be evaluated in order to illustrate how to strengthen evaluation practice.

A number of messages came out of the seminar - among which the most important were:

• the perceptions of evaluation need to be changed - such that evaluation becomes seen as an opportunity for learning.
• there is a demand for practical examples of how local development evaluation is done.
• there is a need to encourage the use of evaluation findings by programme managers.
• there exists a lack of assistance in implementing evaluation and sharing evaluation lessons.

These issues will be further explored by the Evaluation Unit and will be the subject of their 2005 Report.

For access to the final agenda and to download speaker's presentations, please click here  

The seminar took place on Tuesday July 19, 2005 in Bratislava in the premises of Palffyho Palace.

For further information contact Jonathan.Potter@oecd.org from the LEED Secretariat.