Dear ladies and gentlemen,

Welcome to the 1st Western Balkan Evaluation Network. Respected organizers have given me the honour of this opening word.

Launching such an event in 2015 being the International Evaluation Year is of course no coincidence. The ambition of this kick-off meeting is to pave the road for many more such events in the future.

Choosing the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina to be the host is of course also no coincidence. It is a very honorable decision. Knowledge has always been appreciated and highly valued here. Tradition of universities, libraries and scholars has a long line back in history. One part of my family has had close ties with scholars in this city and this makes me especially proud to be here.

At the end of this meeting you are about to adopt the statement that shall endeavour for the support and promotion of the development of evaluation systems in the Western Balkans. A very noble cause to do.

Following OECD DAC principles evaluation is systematic and objective assessment of all aspects of policy-making. An evaluation provides information on relevance and fulfilment of policy objectives; provides information on policy efficiency, its effectiveness, its impact and last but not least its sustainability. Evaluation is so to say the holy grail of good modern governance being either at the personal level, at the level of a single company or at the level of the society as a whole – evaluating either for the local, regional or governmental level.

Professionally I work as an auditor. Currently less on the front line and more in the back office. Taking care of quality control. But still this is also one part of the audit process. Since one of the aspects of our work concerns performance audits I feel very closely connected with your work. Speaking of economy, efficiency and effectiveness, speaking of SMART goals, speaking about indicators, this is no strange territory for me. And that is why I am looking forward to spend this two days with you.

Evaluation does not only explore and measure value it is also a value on its one, because it brings value. The more of the evaluation the higher the value for the society. In next two days you are going to see many presentations, hear many individual opinions, be able to participate in different panel and take a look of the poster section. As participants and the speakers I therefore encourage you to be as active as possible, to share all your opinions, to exchange experiences, make new friends and set the cornerstones for many new personal and organizational bridges in the coming years.

So let us start sharing all this knowledge and let us all value all the moments that we are going to have here in this beautiful City of Sarajevo.

Jorg Kristijan Petrovič, MBA, works at The Court of Audit of the Republic of Slovenia since 2004. For the past three years he is First deputy president – member of the Senat of the Court of Audit. Before that he has worked as Supreme state auditor, responsible for the audits of the state budget.