Application submission, evaluation and financing contract

administration processes Conference and Open Discussion about Effective management of EU structural

funds1-2 of February, 2012

M. Reimeris, The Ministry of Finance of Lithuania (Managing Authority)

Project initiation procedures

• State planning projects (non-competitive calls – selection is made by central authorities based on national strategic planning documents) – 56%

• Regional planning projects (non-competitive calls – selection is made by regional authorities based on regional strategic planning documents ) – 19%

State planning projects and regional planning projects have no scoring selection criteria

• Call for proposals - 25 %

*data of 2012.01.30 in SFMIS2007

Types of project selection (1)Planning projects – projects planned in the national and/or regional strategies and their implementation plans

Planning project:

Strategy/strategy implementation plan

Selection criteria (Monitoring Committee)

Detailed conditions for financing (Ministry)

List of projects (Ministry/Region Council)

Evaluation (IA)

Invitation to submit an application (IA)

Decision to finance a project (Ministry)

Contract (Ministry, IA, project promoter)

Evaluation of administrative compliance

Evaluationof the project’s eligibility

Types of project selection (2)

Call for proposals (open tender) - support for projects where there is a need for “bottom-up” approach and competition

Open call for proposals procedure:

Selection criteria (Monitoring Committee)

Detailed conditions for financing the projects (Ministry)

Evaluation (IA)

Call for proposals (IA)

Decision to finance a project (Ministry)

Contract (Ministry, IA, project promoter)

Evaluation of administrative compliance

Evaluation of of the project’s eligibility

Evaluation of the project’s utility and quality

Project Evaluation and Selection (1)

Evaluation of project applications consists of 3 steps:

1. Administrative compliance assessment,2. Eligibility assessment,3. Quality assessment (applies only for projects selected

by way of call for proposals).

Project selection criteria and their methodology are provided in Guidelines for applicants.

Project Evaluation and Selection (2)

• Simplification evaluation of quality (scoring), administrative compliance and evaluation of the project’s eligibility - all these processes at the same time (or in any order).

• Evaluation is carried out by the Implementing agencies and (or) by the experts. After individual evaluation the results are discussed in evaluation committees.

• Additional projects Selection committees can be established by Line ministries which select projects on the basis of evaluation results

Applications

• Common application part A:

– basic information about project owner and his partners and their declarations,

– project description, – project activities, – project budget,– project indicators,– etc.

• Special application part B

• Annexes

Applications

Administration processes were simplified:

Only one application form for all beneficiaries:– electronically pre-filed

form (depends on fund), – possibility to import data

directly to SFMIS2007, – only necessary data is

required, – general errors

verification in e-forms,– additional errors

verification in SFMIS2007 after import.

Financing contracts• Financing contract includes:

– Standard and special conditions– Annexes (including description of the project based on common application form)

• Possibility to prepare contract in SFMIS2007 automatically:– data automatically transferred from application to contract arrangement,– automatic errors verification in SFMIS2007,– data cross check,– additional errors verification in SFMIS2007.

• General projects implementation information in SFMIS2007 (possibility to monitor projects).

• Possibility to prepare amendment of contract annexes in SFMIS2007.• Amendments of contracts:

– Essential,– Non-essential.

• Possibility to download contract data from SFMIS2007.• Scanned documents are stored in SFMIS2007.

What is in SFMIS2007?(Structural funds management and monitoring information system)

• 4 OP’s and ~6.776 billions of euros for the period 2007-2013.

• About 20 administrative institutions.

• Number of users 753.• Number of applications 996.• Number of contracts 3608.• Number of finished projects

1795.

Data stored in SFMIS2007(Structural funds management and monitoring information system)

• Planning projects lists, calls for proposals

• Applications,

• Evaluations results,

• Financing contracts,

• Financing contracts implementation,

• Financing contracts amendments,

• Scanned documents,

• Other.

Public portal• The public data exports

directly from SFMIS2007 to Public portal www.esparama.lt:

– applications submitted,

– evaluation results,

– project implementation.

• Reliable data, time savings.

Challenges / issues• High costs for project preparation – applications are submitted

with a lot of annexes, rejected and it is absolute loss for project owners;

• To focus on quality – sometimes number of signatures and papers is more important than the benefit of the project;

• Too expensive and difficult management for the institutions – a lot of paper documents and checks. We need to focus on cost effective solutions in all project stages;

• Only e-form applications should be processed; paper documents – annexes, only for medium or large projects;

• Integration with other governmental IT systems.

Our priority is to make administration process as simple as possible.

Thank you for your attention!