In some cases, evaluation commissioners hire highly specialized consultants to provide methodological support and guidance to their staff with a view to enhancing their capacity.
It is a delicate task, which requires technical skills, uncommon mentoring capabilities and respectful dialogue capacities in multicultural environments.
From February 2017 to January 2022 Marco was Senior Advisor, then Team Leader at the Evaluation Support Service (ESS), a Technical Assistance to the Directorate General International Partnership (INTPA, previously DEVCO) of the European Commission.
During this period, he provided and coordinated direct methodological support to EC Evaluation Managers based in around 100 EU Delegations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific as well as in the INTPA Headquarters.
With a 98% average satisfaction rate, the ESS helps its clients defining the feasibility, scope and mandate of their intervention-level evaluations. It also helps them assessing the quality of the methodologies proposed by evaluators, reviewing evaluation reports and disseminating the results of evaluation.
He promoted or was directly involved in providing strategic advice on the reform of the sector as well as in further initiatives aimed at strengthening the quality of evaluation in DG INTPA.