On April 28, 2017, the CEENQA Workshop on “Ways to make external quality assurance a more efficient process” took place in Zagreb, Croatia.

This event featured presentations by representatives of various agencies, members of the CEENQA network.

This project was presented by the EQAR representatives on the Project of Database of External Quality Assurance Results, which consists in creating a web-accessible database of evaluation reports of higher education institutions / study programs to which, the external evaluation was carried out in accordance with European Standards (ESG), by a member agency of the European EQAR network.

The key challenge is to gather information on External Quality Assurance (QA) systems for higher education in Europe and to ensure that the different approaches to QA provided by ESG (assessment, accreditation or audit, at institutional or program level) are included to an acceptable and understandable extent. The fact that many quality assurance agencies publish external QA reports and decisions only in their official language in the database will not be greatly affect the process. Since, basic information on external QA procedures (such as; type, status, formal decision / title, validity) are in English Language, it would provide the user with a general understanding, even if they are unable to read the full report.

The presentation of a representative from the German agency ASIIN, on IT systems for managing external evaluation processes was also important. In this presentation the key points where the building of an effective management system where the internal management system of the ASIIN agency was introduced. From the comparison of PAAHE's management system with ASIIN's management system, there were two components that our system does not support: the staff workload management; b. financial resource management. Mrs. Bozo, the Director of APAAL (ASCAL), gave a presentation in this workshop on the latest developments in the field of higher education in our country; the memorandum of cooperation with the QAA in the framework of the institutional evaluation of the HEI, the progress so far of this process; the capability provided by AMS to manage these processes. Regarding the presentation of Mrs. Bozo all participant showed interest and offered to further collaborate with APAAL (ASCAL) on these innovative agency activities.

Following the activities organized by CEENQA in Zagreb, the General Assembly of this organization was held on April 29, 2017.

The possibilities for cooperation between network agencies were among the main discussions at this meeting: staff exchange for evaluation procedures; cooperation for providing internships with innovative development agencies.

Discussion went on the current status of network member agencies; on potential memberships of other regional agencies, network expansion opportunities.

Admitted to the CEENQA network ANQA agency, Armenia.

Also was elected the new president of CEENQA; Nora Skaburskiene, SKVC (Lithuania), with one year term and three Board members.