Impact Evaluation. The case of the European project Woodie

3.2. How does it work

The online self-assessment tool is targeting public sector in European countries, it applies to all kinds of public administrations, no matter of the scale or mission. Therefore, it can be filled by civil servants (managers/officers) in charge of tasks and responsibilities in the area of whistleblowing and/or of open data.
Once register, the person can start filling in the questionnaires depending the the thematic sections chosen. They can be completed all or alternatevely according to the user’s function.
For each thematic section – Whistleblower protection or Open Data – the online proposes 2 questionnaires. One is about the levelof knowledge of the legislative framework, the other is focusing on the mechanisms and processess of implementation.

The online self-assessment contains a scoring system to systematize the evaluation and provide respondents with a final score and brief feedback on which areas need to be strengthened in order to improve performance and impact of the measure within the organization.  
Feedback are provided both for the questionnaires on the country legislation and for the questionnaires on the implementation of WB and OD measures within each organization but with different systems.

Feedback on the legislative context aim at providing respondents on his/her actual level of knowledge on the legislative provisions on WB and OD measures existing in his/her country. When respondents end the questionnaire, the system shows a summary of the results obtained. It provides two information: the overall score obtained out of 100 (i.e. 60%) and scores in respect to each of the main areas of analysis of the legislative assessment. Answers are broken up into the main areas of analysis and expressed as a percentage of the expected maximum score of each area.

Feedback on the level of implementation and impact within each single public administration are more descriptive. According to the final score obtained, there are four ranges corresponding to four progressive profiles, from poor implementation to successful implementation.  
Each profile presents a short description that allows respondent to understand which are the critical areas and identify areas for improvements. As the self-assessment is done periodically, the online tool allows register variations in the scores obtained and therefore the impact of mitigation measures adopted to improve the implementation.