The aim of the mid-term evaluation was to provide an independent and evidence-based assessment of the implementation of the strategy to date and to support its further management, updating, and funding decisions.
The evaluation focused in depth on the Integration, including Adaptation Programme of the Ministry of Culture, the Communal Estonia programme of the Ministry of the Interior, and the Global Estonianness action plan of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The programmes Smart Population Register and Political Party Financing were considered only from the perspective of the overall coherence of the strategy. The main evaluation criteria were relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency; impact and sustainability were assessed to the extent permitted by the duration of implementation and the available data.
Overall, the evaluation found that the three main policy areas of Cohesive Estonia remain relevant and have become even more important in the changing migration, security, information, and education environment. The joint strategy provides a strong strategic framework and a functioning basis for information exchange and monitoring. However, cross-programme prioritisation, joint decision-making, and systematic follow-up of those decisions have not yet become established management practices.
A range of activities have been implemented under the programmes, and services, support infrastructure, forms of cooperation, and other preconditions for implementing the strategy have been developed. Assessing long-term impact was not the purpose of this mid-term evaluation, and it is still too early to assess many of the activities from this perspective. However, the evaluation found that monitoring by those implementing the activities sometimes focused primarily on the volume of implementation and outputs (e.g. the number of activities carried out) and participation (e.g. the number of participants), rather than on their actual impact – that is, changes in people’s behaviour, attitudes, skills, or other outcomes. Nevertheless, the evaluation indicates that progress is being made towards the objectives of the strategy.
During the second half of the strategy’s implementation period, greater attention should be paid to the continuity of services, better integration of user journeys, clear division of responsibilities between ministries and relevant organisations, and improvements in results measurement and monitoring.
The mid-term evaluation of the “Cohesive Estonia Strategy 2021–2030” was commissioned jointly by the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was funded from Structural Funds technical assistance resources (project “Technical Assistance”, identification number 1M10-TA21-07121), the programme operator’s administrative costs under the “Supporting Social Inclusion” support measure of the Swiss-Estonian Cooperation Programme, and resources from the state budget.
