Background

Increasing the alignment of national programming and their effectiveness are crucial elements of the Joint Programming Process that, even though mainly involving the JPIs, calls for the contribution of the total range P2P activities (JPIs, ERA-NETs, Art. 185s, etc.).

Alignment of national programmes refers to various levels of the programming cycle (agenda setting, policy design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation) and has to overcome several differences and incompatibilities across the different national and regional contexts.

At the same time, countries need to commit shares of the national research budgets and decide which P2P initiatives to take part in. To this end monitoring and impact assessment and the P2P activities demonstrating the actual added value of participating in these schemes has become of primary importance.

The degree of alignment of national programmes at the various stages of the programming cycle can be both a pre-condition and an impact of successful joint programming activities. Due to the novelty of the concept being used in the specific context, the assessment of levels of alignment face several challenges.

To support the P2P community in meeting these challenges and to foster the commitment of Member States toward these goals, specific initiatives have been launched under ERA-LEARN 2020 and by the GPC.

Objectives

The workshop will:

• introduce participants to the overall objectives of the above initiatives and the ongoing activities;
• present a comprehensive overview on the issue of alignment covering all the different phases of the programming cycle accompanied by a selection of case studies to exemplify various modes and approaches to alignment;
• present an impact assessment framework that can serve the purpose of evaluating alignment modalities; and
• give participants the opportunity to discuss on current and novel alignment modalities at national and regional level as well as on possible approaches to the evaluation of alignment in P2P networks.

 

Agenda

9h30-10h00: Keynotes

Speakers will be invited to shortly introduce the works with a summary of the current state of play of their initiatives, focusing on the key objectives and the results of particular interest to the themes of the workshop:

• the GPC Implementation Groups on Alignment and on Monitoring of JPIs (M. Schmid, BMWFW & GPC)
• current approaches to alignment – towards a typology (C. Lesser, INRA/FACCE-JPI Secretariat & ERA-LEARN 2020)
• towards an impact assessment framework on alignment (E. Amanatidou, UNIMAN & ERA-LEARN 2020)

 

10h00-10h40: Interactive Groups

The session will include three working groups discussing the alignment of national programmes and the evaluation of related impact of joint programming initiatives, focusing on the following topics:

• the challenges of evaluating alignment related impacts
• alignment vs other impacts from participation in P2P

• alignment of research programmes and activities: obstacles and good practice elements

10h40-11h15: Final discussion