Baseline and targets | 2014 Support Materials MS

No, for either result or output indicators, targets and baselines (where applicable) may be presented broken down by gender in the OP, but this is not a requirement and they can also be expressed only as a total. Note however, that data on all common indicators for participants have to be reported broken down by gender in the AIR (in addition to the total value). Programme-specific indicators data may also be reported broken down by gender, but this is not a formal requirement.

If an intervention has a target group that is multidimensional (and so are the corresponding target values for the result indicators), appropriate programme-specific result indicators should be set. In this case, the column “common output indicator used as basis for target setting” would indeed remain empty (N/a) and the basis should be specified in the name of the indicator.

For example, in an investment priority related to supporting young people, the common output indicator "below 25 years of age" might not really be relevant as only this age group is involved. Instead, it would be more relevant to assess the educational attainment level of participants at the entry into the ESF operation. In this case, where participants with a wide range of educational attainment can participate and expectations for success are very diverse, it is indeed recommended to breakdown the result indicator by educational attainment to avoid the creaming effect and misleading results.

Note that the target value can be expressed either in absolute terms (number of participants) or as a percentage (proportion out of total target group with the result measured by the result indicator).

The SFC has a drop-down menu that filters automatically the common output indicators to be used as basis. The general rules for the drop-down menu are as follows:

i) Only common output indicators which are relevant to the common result indicator are displayed. For example, this excludes:

• "employed" for the result indicators addressing unemployed/inactive
• "unemployed" and "inactive" for the result indicator related to improved labour market situation
• "below 25 years of age" for the result indicator targeting people aged over 54.

ii) Only one common output indicator can be selected for each common result indicator (for instance, selecting both "unemployed" and "inactive" is not possible). This implies that if you want to set a result indicator that takes as reference population both unemployed and inactive participants you should set up a new programme-specific result indicator.

iii) No common output indicator can be related to the common result indicators related to disadvantaged people.

No. Target values for result indicators do not need to be set in reference to all output indicators, only to the relevant ones depending on the main target group. The output indicators used as reference should reflect the main target group in the investment priority concerned. Note that some restrictions apply regarding to which common output indicators can be selected for each result indicator.

Targets for common result indicators shall be set in function of the data reported for common output indicators. In accordance with the EC Guidance document on Monitoring and Evaluation based on the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 288/2014 which includes the model for operational programmes (see table 4), it is not possible to set a target for a common result indicator without choosing a common output indicator as reference (this in SFC means that the field is mandatory).

Alternatively, result indicators can be specified as "programme-specific indicators", in order, for example, to link to more than one common output indicator. In that case the field on common output indicators used as basis is not obligatory.

For the performance framework, milestones and targets should be set at the level of priority axis based on indicators which are a subset of already selected programme indicators (see Guidance fiche performance framework review and reserve in 2014-2020, p. 6). 

No. Baseline values are not to be included into the target value.

Indeed, each indicator and each target shall be broken down by category of region (with the exception of YEI indicators). Hence the data sets submitted for each indicator cover only one single category of region (i.e. common indicators must be reported broken down by category of region).

Following a learning seminar organised in 2013 by the EC, two background papers present methodologies for setting and adjusting quantified cumulative targets related to employment and social inclusion (“ESF performance target setting and adjusting in social inclusion” and “Setting and adjusting targets for ESF Operational Programmes”), available at: http://ec.europa.eu/esf/main.jsp?catId=67&langId=en&newsId=8174  

No. It is not necessary to set targets for all indicators. As noted in the EC Guidance document on Monitoring and Evaluation, quantified targets “shall be set for a limited number of common and or programme-specific indicators at the level of investment priority and category of region. Limited means in this context that not all indicators need to be linked with a target value”. The only exceptions are the YEI result indicators (both immediate and longer-term) all of which are required to have associated targets.

In general, it is up to managing authorities to select the indicators against which to set targets, based on their relevance to the objectives of the programme. If programme-specific indicators are used, it is possible that targets are applied only to these and not to any of the common output or result indicators.