The different departure points of the countries involved in the project (some of the participants have never undertaken an impact assessment, but all attempt to improve their practices in doing this), as well as the mix of small and large countries and regions and of ‘old’ and ‘new’ member/associated states provides a good background to undertake a project of this nature. Experienced countries can contribute to the consortium with previous lessons learned, and non-experienced countries can use their future experience as a fieldwork for identified best practices.

The main expected outcomes of this network of public authorities from different Member States and their regions are:

- raising the awareness of the importance of impact assessment and of good practices,
- gaining insights into assessing the systemic impact of public R&D funding,
- improving methodologies used for impact assessment studies,
- harmonising and defining common standards,
- conducting pilot studies on untested water or case studies for transferability of regional/national approaches to other regions/Member States,
- defining guidelines for the efficient use of impact assessment in defining the most appropriate policy mix,
- bringing together policy-makers and practitioners.

In particular the search for an appropriate policy mix of the different areas selected for the project, will be a major added value to foster world class research in Europe.

The active involvement of public administrations of the present and future EU Presidencies in the project and the commitment to put this project on the EU Presidencies’ agendas during the next two years will ensure a high visibility and will surely increase the awareness of the importance of impact assessment for policy mix design.

A close link between the project and ongoing work at the OECD in the field of impact assessment will be fruitful by bringing additional insights and by making the results available for policy makers in a broader range of countries.

The close link between OECD-work and this project will be realised through different channels:
- the administrators in the OECD-secretariat in charge of the work on impact assessment will be invited to participate - as an external expert - in this OMC-net;
- the coordinator of this OMC-net is a member of the advisory board of the OECD-TIP activity on impact assessment;
- data recommendations produced in this OMC-net will be done in exchange of views with NESTI, the OECD-group on STI-indicators.

Also, in order to use potential synergies between the OMC-Net and regional innovation strategies and cohesion policy investments in RTD and innovation, the relevant Structural Fund Managing Authorities will be informed at an early stage about the project.

Close attention will be paid not to duplicate core activities by other organisations/projects. Instead, potential synergies will be looked after by means of joint organisation and close cooperation in particular areas of impact assessment (like presented above for the OECD).