Previous table illustrates the use of the Logical Framework in a rural development project in
Romania. Table presents only a selection of a larger set of interlocking frameworks detailing
different objectives hierarchy as well as the subcomponents of the project (capacity building, roads
and water and sanitation). The initial use of such a tool might assure a good start of the
implementation process, as long as the actors later on involved in the implementation are fully
aware of its implication.
Knowledge Strengthening and Networking in the Objective 1 Programme, Finland
In Finland, the Lonnrot Institute co-ordinated the mid-term evaluation of the Objective 1
programme. The focus on that evaluation was “Knowledge strengthening and Networking in the
Objective 1 Programme” (see Ponnikas et al 2005). One question asked in that evaluation was
related to the role of the best practices and operations models in strengthening knowledge and
networking. As the conclusions on that evaluation question, we can say it is often even impossible
to transfer and use a good operations model elsewhere; in a successful activity, it occurs the matter
of combining different kind of best practices and operations models, not the use of a separate
technique. In addition to this, a successful activity is dependent on unique context and the time of
implementation for each project.
When so called best practices are observed at the level of programme - as in this evaluation - the
concept of best practice does come close to management and quality of development processes.
How does the programme process progress so that thematic and regional effect is as good as
possible? Same kind of thinking is suitable, at least suggestively, when implementing projects. It is
obvious from this point of view that in the connection to structural funds programmes’ best practice
cannot be a “case-like package” that can be transferred and accommodated. Best practice means
more likely that authorities, financiers, planners, and project personnel do their own part so that
target groups can get the advantage targeted by the programme. In the context of programme
activity, the model of best practices occurs whenever the programmes and their corresponding
knowledge collected during activity satisfy the needs of the actors (enterprises and other
employers), active and directly functioning in the affected regions. In these circumstances, best
practices are observed at programme process level for instance whenever the services of knowledge
and networking are produced from the users’ real order. (Ponnikas et al 2005, 14-15; 115-117.)
Needs oriented project implementation is the basis for all the project activites. When we evaluate or
research the best practices and find them somewhere, we have to put our focus on the process the
results come from. We cannot just take good results without understanding the process behind them.
As the recommendations about best practices in that evaluation we said that, when planning the
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