Mid-Term Evaluation of SOCIEUX - Social Protection European Union Expertise in Development Cooperation

 

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SOCIEUX is a European Union’s technical assistance facility aimed at improving the capacities of partner countries to design and manage inclusive, effective, and sustainable labour and employment policies and social protection systems. SOCIEUX provides access to short-term high-quality European expertise from peers to peers. It is a demand-driven facility where institutions from partner countries submit requests in a simple format.

The SOCIEUX areas of intervention include all social protection, labour and employment dimensions, including: social insurance (contributory pensions, health, accident, unemployment protection);  social assistance (cash transfer programmes, income guarantee schemes, old age benefits, child and disability grants, public works, social services); labour (policy and law, active labour market policies, information systems, decent work, workers, informal economy, working conditions, labour relations, labour standards, social dialogue); employment (policy, security and services, vocational education and training and skills development). Partner Institutions are eligible from European Union Neighbourhood, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific.

The objective of the project delivered by NTU in 2015 was to assess the progress achieved (from facility set up till 2015), identify strengths, weaknesses and constraints encountered, and draw key lessons and recommendations that will inform decisions on improvement and for future programming.

Source: http://socieux.eu/about/

How we did it

NTU team provided the European Commission (DEVCO) with sufficient information to evaluate:

  1. How SOCIEUX is currently managed and how its management could be improved.
  2. The performance of the project, paying particular attention to the outcomes and results of individual technical assistance interventions (“actions”) against their specified objectives and the extent to which these individual actions have contributed to the government-owned processes for which they were requested.
  3. The relevance of SOCIEUX in the context of EU support to the extension of inclusive and sustainable social protection in low and middle income countries.
  4. The effective deployment of the potential resources and expertise of the European Social Protection community of practice and, likewise, the potential of South-South cooperation.

The evaluation was divided in 3 stages:

  • Desk Phase
  • Field Phase
  • Synthesis Phase

The data was collected, among others, from the Facility Beneficiaries, EU Member States Focal Points, EU Experts, and EU Delegations (in a form of surveys and interviews).

Impact:

A series of recommendations for SOCIEUX have been developed in line with the key conclusions of the mid-term evaluation. The recommendations concerned, among others:

  • a strategic framework for further development and improvement;
  • efficient use of the remaining contract period to launch, test and implement new initiatives to strengthen SOCIEUX;
  • a Monitoring Framework to Track Progress on TA Interventions;
  • work processes and resource optimisation strategies;
  • visibility and awareness building;
  • increased focus on promoting long-term institutional cooperation; etc.