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System for Fund Management in the European Union
Published by on 25 July 2014

Should information that is not relevant to the operation/programme objectives be collected for all common (output and result) indicators (e.g. labour market situation of participants in operations targeting civil servants who by definition are employed)?

Yes. Reporting on the full set of common indicators listed in Annex I of the ESF Regulation (Regulation (EU) No 1304/2013) is required for all IPs supported by the ESF  (see also section 3.1 of the EC Guidance document on Monitoring and Evaluation). The only exception relates to Technical Assistance priority axes.

However, not all data have to be collected by asking participants. Where possible, the use of already available administrative data is recommended so as to minimise administrative burden. For operations targeting particular groups for which it is clear and certain that all participants have specific characteristics (e.g. employed), participation records in the monitoring database can be completed without asking the participant (e.g. auto-filled fields). Any such treatment should be documented and justified.

Fields recording irrelevant data should be completed with “0” (see definitions in Annex C and the “reference population” for each of the result indicators in Annex B of the EC Guidance document on Monitoring and Evaluation). For example, the immediate result indicator dealing with participants engaged in job-searching on leaving refers only to participants who were inactive on joining. Data for this indicator do not need to be collected directly from participants who were employed or unemployed on joining and the fields recording these results can be completed with 0.

Note that it is not possible to report values for indicators as “not applicable”. Each participant must count either 1 or 0 towards each of the non-sensitive indicators (although for indicators on personal sensitive data, “non-response” values can be recorded).

Finally, in addition to the obligatory common indicators, Member States may also elaborate programme-specific (output and result) indicators which can facilitate more effective monitoring of the specific programme objectives. A separate guidance note dedicated to indicators for public administration capacity building is available.