The Competence Centre has recently published practical Guidelines to evaluating processes of citizen engagement in policymaking. At the moment, it is aimed at Commission policy officers, while work at the Competence Centre continues towards expanding its usability also for other kindred institutions, as well as to the wider Community of Practice of participation and evaluation experts. This effort builds on a broad co-creative process integrating inputs from policymakers, scholars and practitioners of both participation and evaluation, as well expert contributions.

Why evaluate participatory exercises?

Following the Conference on the Future of Europe, the Commission has committed to expanding citizen engagement through pan-EU deliberative formats and smaller targeted exercises. This in turn presents an opportunity to harness learnings from implementations and focus on improving processes – and the very opportunities for widened democratic participation. Conducting evaluations of participatory processes is the best way to ensure and improve the quality, integrity and impact of these processes in a transparent and responsible way for all involved.

The “Evaluation Compass”

The Evaluation Compass is a schematic representation of the criteria comprising the proposed evaluation framework. It helps define the scope of the evaluation, offering a vantage point at the initial stage of conceptualising and elaborating the need to evaluate a participatory process. It serves as a guide in deciding on the criteria and questions that the evaluation should address. It comprises five major categories of criteria: Ecosystem, Project, Process, Participants, and Outcome.

• The Ecosystem category acknowledges that engagement processes are not standalone activities happening in isolation. It directs the evaluator to consider evolutions in the framings of the problem, be it during the process or by interactions with other actors and the political process. It also enables a closer look into the organisers’ ideas to understand how they make sense of the engagement process.
• The Project category looks at the preparation, planning and implementation of the activities underpinning the participatory exercise, including the overall supervision and management of the activities (e.g., participant recruitment, stakeholder management), and how this affects the attainment of objectives, the use of resources, or the involvement of third parties.
• The Participants category addresses the experience of the participating citizens throughout the engagement process. It specifically considers how their agency got enabled, and how their role evolved. It also considers the composition of the participants as a group and this group’s dynamics throughout the process. Lastly, it addresses the ways in which participants engage with the issues and with each other.
• The Process category looks at procedural aspects that concern the interactions among participants and other involved actors, as well as the unfolding of and connections between stages of the participatory process. It is concerned with various factors that influence the overall quality of the process.
• The Outcomes category focuses on what the participatory process achieved and delivered, including direct outputs such as recommendations, or more systemic outcomes, such as what new knowledge emerged and how it was taken up as organisational learning.

Application

The Young Citizens Assembly on Pollinators is the first participatory activity run by the European Commission to be evaluated following this practical guidance. The Competence Centre can support other interested Commission services in exploring the application of the framework to other participatory initiatives, as well as in preparing evaluation Terms of Reference and in collaborating with evaluators.

We are already working with interested authorities in Member States on exploring the potential for integrating criteria on the Evaluation Compass as part of their participatory governance arrangements, and to support them in enhancing their capacities for evaluating participatory exercises systematically.

Ongoing development

We invite further input from interested colleagues, as well as from practitioners of participation and of evaluation, to continue exploring the use of this framework in preparing evaluations of participatory exercises initiated by public authorities. Meanwhile, we are developing a dedicated and detailed training module to expand our training offer on Citizen Engagement in Policymaking. Stay tuned for the announcement of the next training session scheduled for October 2025.