Evaluation has become increasingly important in the last few years, partly because of a cultural change towards demonstration of effectiveness and cost efficiency, but also because evaluation is useful for investigating innovation particularly in the context programmes and projects that seek to research and instigate change. The heightened focus on evaluation has led to the development of new tools and processes and to increasing research in the area.

The Evaluate Europe web site is intended as an action space for innovation and research in evaluation practice and theory. The site will both report on and be an organizing platform for research and projects - national and European and will also promote the newly formed European Interest Group on evaluation.

Evaluate Europe is committed to evaluation as a developmental process that illuminates or enlightens the specific policies, processes and practice of its stakeholders, contributes to the collective learning of the wider community, and is ultimately an instrument for informed change.

The process is most appropriate and most useful in situations of change and mobility, where understanding change and its consequences can contribute to the development of relevant responses.

The commitment is underpinned by emphasis upon:

• The development of relationships between evaluator and client that are not based on dependency but on joint understanding. The evaluation process should be one, therefore, that empowers the client to become more autonomous in their capacity to make informed future strategic decisions.
• Evaluation as being an integral part of the organisational planning and decision-making process. This implies a facility for ongoing review as opposed to a disconnected exercise that is ‘tacked on at the end’; it also implies that the evaluation process should be thought through and designed before, not after, the work starts.
• The need to ensure that evaluation results are both transparent and transferable, leading to a focus on targeted dissemination to both internal and external stakeholders. For both these sets of stakeholders, recommendations need to be more than aspirations or ‘wish-lists’. The process of deciding on which recommendations to pursue in which way should be one based on joint understanding of real constraints and opportunities; not on external expert pronouncements made outside the realm of such understanding.