Evaluation capacity building – theory and practice
The article presents the review of literature on the notion, elements and factors influencing development of evaluation capacity. Analysis of practical examples allows to indicate the key factors contributing to development of evaluation culture. Experiences of many countries show that predominant motive to introduce evaluation practice is an outside pressure, as a precondition of external financial support (the World Bank, the European Union). However, in those countries evaluation practice proved to be less developed and durable. International research suggests that countries which introduced evaluation as a consequence of internal forces, connected with reforms of the public sector, developed mature and durable evaluation culture.

Utility as a criterion of public policy evaluation
In this article we will present the mistakes made both by ordering and executing side in understanding and defining the evaluation criterion of utility. We will discuss the problems with final use of this criterion in the Polish evaluation reports of EU Operational Programmes. The analysis will eventually show how important it is to understand ex post evaluation as measuring the adequacy of the program effects in targeting the needs of final users.

Effectiveness – the criterion of assessing investments co-financed from the European Union budget
Whenever public money is spent, it is necessary to evaluate the undertaken efforts. First of all, these assessments must be comparable, which implies the need to prepare and implement common procedures for each financing source. The European Commission uses a basic scheme for evaluating the effects of public intervention based on the product – result – impact model in which immediate and long-term intervention effects are assessed by selected criteria: utility, efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and sustainability.
This seemingly simple evaluation scheme generates in practice a lot of interpretation and application difficulties, which, in its turn, limits the comparability of achieved assessment outcomes (evaluation outcomes).
This paper aims to describe basic issues connected with public intervention assessment (based on the product-result-impact model). The author focuses on the effectiveness criterion as one of the basic criteria for the assessment of investments co-financed from the European Union budget and surveys its definitions present in European guidelines and used by other international institutions engaged in project evaluation.
The paper primarily attempts to estimate the degree of difference and discrepancy in defining effectiveness and the impact of this on the reliability of public intervention assessment.

Economic evaluation in the light of basic principles of public resources economy
The aim of this article is to present relation between economic evaluation and principles of public resources economy which are valid in Poland. The author shows these principles from the praxiological point of view, the nature of the economic evaluation, its selected methods (among others the method of cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis) and areas of their applications. Simultaneously she stresses the need of the compliance of these methods with principles of the social justice.

The evaluation as the instrument of managing the union project in area of public aid
The article takes attempt to indicate the level of using the evaluation as an instrument of the project management improvement. In this case, conducted research was extended to the identification of the evaluation interpretation way by entities performing projects. The study was based on data from completed projects which were funded from the UE budget. These projects were related to the fight against social exclusion, performed in years of 2008-2010. First part of the article is affiliated with the theoretical basis of the evaluation and shows the place and the role of the evaluation in the management process of the UE project. Second part of the elaboration includes research results and outcomes of conducted analysis. In the third part it was showed however recommendations aimed especially to the higher level of management institutions.

The conception of computerization evaluation in the process of introducing process management in local governments
In contemporary conditions organizations look for ways of achieving competitive advantage in any possible areas. Recently they have turned into improvements of their managements systems. One of possible change there is resigning from traditional structures and turning them into processes due to introduction of process management. In the article the authors have pictured the stages through which local governments must move to achieve full level of process maturity. Special research has been conducted to establish how many local governments in Dolnośląskie region have introduced fully process management. Also, the research has enabled to get to know what level of computerization the governments are on and what technologies they use. Moreover, the use of BPM instruments has been examined. The research has shown that local governments in that region are not advanced in terms of process management practices and technologies used.