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"In European research policy, people often look to Austria because we have something that other countries lack. Namely, a platform where all actors in the evaluation of research and technology policy gather and exchange ideas," explains Klaus Schuch, Managing Director of the fteval platform and Scientific Director of the ZSI - Centre for Social Innovation. The Austrian Platform for Research and Technology Policy Evaluation (fteval) celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. But what exactly is evaluation and why do we need it? The short answer from Sonja Sheikh, chairwoman of the association and managing director of ACR - Austrian Cooperative Research is: "To [...]

There is a growing recognition of the need to accelerate the development and improvement of clean energy technologies globally to enhance our ability to follow net-zero emission pathways. Initiatives like Mission Innovation have helped to grow public R&D funding for clean energy in many countries, and they take a variety of policy approaches to supporting researchers and entrepreneurs. Evidence about which support mechanisms most effectively drive clean energy innovations, and under which conditions, could help governments to adopt best practice in innovation policy design to meet clean energy goals. Structured and comparable evaluations can contribute to the policy-making process in different ways: it facilitates learning about [...]

What can econometric methods do - what can they not? Innovation activities, especially research and development, are publicly funded in many ways (tax incentives or directly through R&D grants, guarantees and liabilities). Knowledge of the impact of funding is essential for funding institutions and policy makers. In recent years, the availability of innovation data has increased. At the same time, the spectrum of statistical and econometric methods has expanded, especially methods that measure the causal effect of funding.   The aim of the discussion event is therefore to provide an overview of econometric methods for the causal estimation of funding effects [...]

Together with the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development, the fteval Platform is committed to the further development of the evaluation landscape in Austria. This year, for the first time, we are presenting the Evaluation Talent Award as a contribution to make the importance of evaluations for evidence-based policy-making more visible to the public. The award is intended to give young evaluation talents the opportunity to position themselves in the relevant community. A prize of € 2.000 is awarded, dedicated to further training measures. The awarding ceremony will take place as a part of the REvaluation Conference 2021 in November. All Informationen can be found [...]

After over a decade of working with our current provider, the European Evaluation Society (EES) is looking for a new Secretariat / Association Management to support its growing presence in the international evaluation community. Please, find some details in the Request for Proposals (RFP) on the EES website: https://europeanevaluation.org/events/ees-secretariat-association-management/ The deadline to apply is 30 June 2021.

The European Evaluation Society (EES) and the Peer-to-Peer Evaluation Career Advisory Sessions in Europe Team (p2p Europe+) offer a new volunteering opportunity for Young and Emerging Evaluators in the field of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). EES’ Thematic Working Group 5 “yEES!” and p2p Europe+ are looking for volunteers to get involved in a variety of initiatives, including supporting the EES Online Conference in 2021, contributing to our blog and podcast series, and organizing p2p career advice events. These opportunities are open to anyone who is a Young and Emerging Evaluator. Please find more information on these opportunities in this flyer and on the yEES! webpage. Interested volunteers can sign up [...]

While citizen science is by definition highly participatory, its evaluation and impact assessment practices often do not live up to this claim. In this special issue we will explore existing approaches to participatory evaluation that involve participants of citizen science activities in reflecting and assessing projects’ or initiatives’ processes and outcomes. This involvement may range from co-designing the evaluation strategy to creating evaluation or monitoring instruments to be used during and after the project, to name but a few.   The special issue aims to collect and discuss a wide range of methods of participatory evaluation, informed by the experiences gathered [...]

In summer 2020 the fteval community launched an internal working group for capturing the state of the art of impact assessment of R&I policy and transfer it to the Austrian context. Three sub-groups analysed specific aspects of the impact on social innovations, on science-society relations and on a so-called "green economy". These groups were steered by Joanneum Research, the OIS Center at Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft and the Austrian Institute for SME Research. The results in web-post format can be viewed here: Impact of RTI policy on social innovations [in English] Impact of RTI policy on the relation between science and society [in English] [...]