NRN Self-Assessment Profiles

Austria

The Austrian National Rural Network’s support unit (NSU) does not apply a formalised approach to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) or self-assessment. With networking in its current format representing a novelty to rural development in Austria, the NSU approaches its tasks by monitoring feedback obtained from network participants in response to ongoing NRN activities.

Assessment of NRN Performance

The monitoring and subsequent planning of NRN activities is the role of the network’s five Technical Support Groups (TSGs), which have been established for each of the thematic areas serviced by the NSU (agriculture, forestry, environment, rural development and Leader).

Meeting twice a year, TSG members stimulate consultation by providing constructive comments on past NRN activities and outputs. New activity proposals or areas of concern that may require corrective actions are identified and further discussed.

TSGs are informal fora, involving officials as well as creative thinkers. While their members do not necessarily fully cover the variety of network participants, the TSG approach has secured participation and acceptance among rural actors and stakeholders involved in the NRN.

Other regular activities with potential to establish relevant feedback for the evaluation/self-assessment process include:

1. Regular internal coordination meetings of the consortium partners managing the network support unit contract (Agrarprojektverein, UWD, ÖAR), involving both a review of inputs and outputs (including target calibration if necessary).
2. Bi-annual meetings with the Managing Authority, including officials from ministerial departments involved in the Rural Development Programme (RDP) delivery, involving the review of past and planned NRN activities.
3. Participation in RDP Monitoring Committee (MC) meetings, involving the presentation of past and planned NRN activities.
4. Annual meetings with the presidents of the Chambers of Agriculture of Austria’s nine federal states, involving the presentation of past and planned NRN activities.

Stakeholder Surveys

The NSU gathers feedback mainly through surveys among NRN event participants. Short and straightforward participant feedback forms are used to evaluate past and to prepare future events.

Event participants anonymously provide their overall impression, choosing one out of four given grades. In addition, in their answers to three open questions participants are invited to express what they liked and disliked and what they would suggest for the future. Summaries of event evaluation results are usually annexed to the NSU’s Annual Activity Report.

Other than this the network support unit applies the following approaches for its activity monitoring and evaluation:

• In the context of work-related (phone) conversation with network participants, should a specific point be raised or feedback and suggestions be provided. No evidence is available about the extent to which this produced exploitable information, as no system is in place to assess the NSU’s service hotline.
• On the occasion of the publication of the first issue of the network’s magazine ‘Ausblicke’, the readership was invited to contribute with suggestions, praise or criticism (four issues published to date).
• The NSU’s Annual Work Plan (AWP) for 2011 reports basic website visit statistics, which were established with the help of Google Analytics. According to these statistics 60,000 website visitors consulted a total of 217,000 pages during the period of January to November 2010.

In addition, selected NRN participants assessed previous NRN seminars related to agrienvironmental measures in the course of an evaluation meeting, aiming to identify agrienvironmental themes and related issues that future NRN events could focus on.

Evaluation

The NSU establishes for most of its planned activities quantitative and qualitative target indicators at output and results level in its Annual Work Plan. These are revisited and reviewed as part of the annual activity reporting exercise.

The mid-term evaluation of the Austrian RDP included an evaluation of the NSU’s performance, which essentially relied on the analysis of event participant feedback and on information about target indicator achievement provided in the NSU’s annual activity reports.

Furthermore, some of the RDP-specific evaluation questions (EQs) applied by the mid-term evaluator in the context of the assessment of axis 4 measures produced information of relevance to the NRN support unit’s current service offer.

Furthermore it is worth noting that the RDP mid-term evaluator considered a quality assurance indicator for Local Development Strategy (LDS) implementation by Local Action Groups (LAG), which assesses the intensity of LAG participation in NRN activities.

2010 Mid-term Evaluation Report - Evaluierungsbericht 2010, Teil B, Bewertung der Einzelmaßnahmen (pages 573-579), [PDF ]