1. AIR 2012 – Guidance Lessons learned Incl. 2012 Strategic Report
John Walsh
Alida Staicu
Evaluation and European Semester Unit - DG for Regional and Urban Policy
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Brussels, 30 – 31 May 2013

2. Guidance AIR 2012 Desk officers - Quality check requirements
- reporting of the categorisation data & indicators defined in the approved OPs
- identical core indicators reported in the AIR and SFC2007
- reported data linked to the achievements
- in case of "no of projects", reported data linked to the "selected projects"
- plausible reported data
MEMBER STATES: Ask for the INFOVIEW tables from Desk Officers

3. Lessons learnt from AIR 2011 and Strategic Report
Core Indicators are being used on a pilot / voluntary basis … a practice run for !
Not all OPs report when they could … underreporting of 20% - 50% !
no coherence with the project selection data (MS allocating money but not reporting against the relevant core indicators);
data reported for one OP only, missing the figures for other OPs using the same indicator;
reported data for the ERDF only, CF figures not included.

4. Lessons learnt from AIR 2011 and Strategic Report
Lack of (plausibility) checks of what is input
significant differences between the SR and AIR data for same period (SR data lower in most of cases, in some SR additional indicators used)

5. Use of Indicators … Part 1
Inconsistent reporting / use linked to
Different national / regional definitions / practices in relation to indicators i.e. jobs
Lack of consistency in related indicators – ie
jobs created total … and the relationship with
Jobs created in SMEs
Research Jobs

6. Use of Indicators … Part 2
Inconsistent reporting / use linked to
Inconsistent measurement units – i.e. energy (MWh or KW used instead of MW), transport time savings,
Reporting Contracted vs achieved outputs / results
In case of "no of projects", reporting "completed" instead of "selected"
"Problems" with target setting … no targets, too high or too low targets …

7. Categorisation … Checking for continued progress in project selection
Risk of erroneous data …
Quality and coverage of data on "form of finance", Territorial and Economic Dimensions, Location dimension.
Risk of over programming to strategy
Likelihood of question in quality check…

8. Example … Gross job creation
What is it comparing?
share of total all EU financing –
Share of reported jobs created (normally excludes jobs safeguarded, temporary jobs and project under way … so a preliminary picture).
What does it say?
Some important beneficiaries have reported very low or zero jobs created …
There are strong assymetries between volumes allocated and jobs created … only partly explainable by reporting lags or differences in the composition of programmes (i.e. ration of business support vs infrastructure)

9. Revised …

10. Conclusions Big improvements since 2010 Exercise, but
"Much needs to be done"
… starting now for 2012 Annual reports …..

11. Thank you for your attention!