Good points to NACAO in Mid-Term Review
NACAO project has gone through mid-term review. The review is a process that every Interreg Europe project meets on its halfway. Evaluation was done by Joint Secretariat who monitor our success.
Our project is progressing very well. All the activities have been implemented according to project plan. Likewise, all the partners and the associate policy authorities are fully involved in the exchange of experience and committed with the learning process. Exchange of experiences means our learning visit on each of our partner regions in different European countries. In NACAO thematic visits are done to Spain, Italy, France, Poland, Germany and Finland.
Most partners are expected to report a policy change before the end of the core phase, even if the policy instruments differ from those initially addressed. If improvements are not achieved, then we need to do action plan to the follow-up phase of the project to show how needed improvements will be done. Currently, everything seems to go well with improvements of policy instruments. At the end of the project, the indicator for 'organisations with increased capacity' will be measured by using a questionnaire distributed to all involved organisations.
In the Interreg Europe projects partners are allowed to suggest and seek funding for pilot actions. Pilots are practical testing arenas, where good practices from other regions can be tested in real life. In NACAO, three pilot project are under preparation process and we got first hand feedback during the mid-term review. In particular, future work should focus on clarifying the link between the policy instrument and the pilots being tested.
"A pilot action is an implementation-related activity dedicated to testing a new approach to public intervention. This is usually the transfer of a successful practice from one region to another, but it can also be a new initiative jointly designed by the project. The ultimate objective of a pilot action is that, when it is successful, it is ultimately integrated into the policy instrument addressed and therefore contributes to improving it. Budget can vary between 50 000 – 130 000 €."
On financial point of view, NACAO project is facing an underspending of -12.9% (around EUR 75,000) after three semesters. The underspending is expected to increase to around EUR 100,000 after four semesters, primarily due to pending external costs and communication activities. Project partners are encouraged to reduce their spending gap, and these we will work on coming semesters.
