Guiding Questions for Panels: EQA of activities in development
Publication of Guiding Questions for Panels: external quality assurance of activities in development
The essence
The Register Committee has published guiding questions that can be used as an aiding tool by external review panels, when reviewing activities within the scope of the ESG that at the time of the site visit have not been launched yet, but are in a planning or pilot phase.
The rationale
Between the cyclical reviews, agencies often introduce new activities and/or revise existing ones. Agencies are expected to report these changes to EQAR (via change reports). Assessing compliance of these newly introduced or revised activities can, however, be challenging for the EQAR Register Committee without an in-depth external peer review.
Since the external reviews are an excellent opportunity for the Register Committee to gain insight in an activity before listing it on the Register, the RC finds it beneficial to include the pilot activities in the external reviews, even if they have not been launched in their final form yet.
Added value
The guiding questions are aimed at reviewers. QA agencies also stand to benefit from this approach. Based on experience so far, external feedback on pilot activities can help the agency with the further development of their methodologies.
Use and application
The guiding questions are not obligatory for the panels. In case the activities in question have not yet been launched at the time of the external review, the reflections of the panel will not impact the judgement of compliance by the Register Committee.
The use of this document will, however, make EQAR’s decision-making process more efficient (e.g. by reducing the need for further clarification from the panel and/or the QA agency after the external review report is submitted to EQAR).
The document also presents some good practices from external review reports of evaluated EQAR-registered agencies and highlights situations in which review panels already considered activities in development at the time of the review.