Project management

The ENRI-East Consortium is an international network of 11 research teams that cooperate with each other since more than 15 years. However, in legal terms, ENRI-East it is an ad-hoc association officially established just for the purposes of conducting the particular study as laid out in the Description of Work (DoW), which is an integral part of the Grant Agreement (GA) concluded between the European Commission and the ENRI-East partners.
In addition to the GA and DoW, the next core document of the project is the Consortium Agreement (CA), a kind of project’s Constitution.  The CA defines the scope of work assigned to each partnering team, establishes the decision-making procedures in the consortium, defines the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) with regard to the data, reports and other scientific outcomes of the project.
Establishment documents of the ENRI-East Consortium are as follows:

  • Grant Agreement (between the European Commission and the Project Coordinator)
  • Accession Forms (every partner entering the ENRI-East Grant Agreement)
  • Consortium Agreement (between all ENRI-East partners)
  • a variety of guidelines and rules for the implementation of FP7 projects

These important documents shall be made public as soon as the European Commission and the Consortium officially adopt them.
In the meantime, the following managing bodies are foreseen to steer the project (subject to further adjustments in the course of project’s negotiations and further establishment procedures.)

Annual Assembly of ENRI-East Consortium

All team leaders and leading experts are meeting at least once a year at alternating locations.  This is thought to be a main consultative and coordination tool to address and discuss scientific and general administrative issues of the project.

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ENRI-East Steering Committee (SC)

This Committee includes all eleven team leaders, as well as the Principal Investigator (who chairs the ENRI-East SC), Chair of the Ethical Issues Group, project’s Gender Equality Officer and the Chair of project’s Advisory Board.
The Steering Committee is a main decision-making body of the consortium; it meets or communicates at least twice a year and is responsible for:

  • Approval of detailed guidelines of research work packages;
  • Taking a final decision regarding the geographical, thematic and methodical scopes of the planned project quantitative and qualitative surveys;
  • Review and approval of draft research reports and deliverables, including quality assurance of new surveys;
  • Approval of possible changes and adjustments in work packages, timelines, consortium composition and budget allocations;
  • Approval of agenda for project meetings;
  • Approval of agenda and programs for regional workshops and the final conference;
  • Coordination of steering and quality assurance efforts with the Advisory Board;
  • Other issues of research, discussion and dissemination of project results.

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ENRI-East Project Coordinator

The coordinating team from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna is responsible for the liaison with the European Commission, distribution of funds, collection of deliverables and compilation of annual as well as final reports to the Commission.  The Coordinating institution is the Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS-Vienna), represented in the ENRI-East project by its Team Leader Dr. Alexander Chvorostov.

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ENRI-East Central Management Unit (CMU)

The coordinator is assisted by a small team, acting as the Consortium Management Unit (Principal Investigator Prof. Heinrich, Coordinator Dr. Chvorostov and junior technical and accounting assistants) who will be responsible for the day-to-day administration of the project. The role of the coordinating team will also be to organise project meetings and to ensure the smooth functioning of the project.

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ENRI-East Survey Technical Group (STG)

The Survey Technical Group includes consortium and team leaders with a great deal of knowledge in survey design and implementation. This group is to coordinate the surveys and to secure the quality assurance of the conducted fieldworks; this group is subordinated to the Steering Committee and functions on its behalf.

The responsibilities of the Survey Technical Group are:

  • To suggest the Steering Committee the options for the geographical, thematic and methodical scopes of the planned project quantitative and qualitative surveys;
  • To approve the design the research instruments (sampling procedures, questionnaires, instructions, data entry, cleaning and unification procedures)
  • To undertake necessary steps to assure the quality of quantitative and qualitative surveys;
  • To oversee the procedures of uniformed data entry, cleaning and unification of the international survey data sets

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ENRI-East Dissemination and Communication Group (DCG)

The establishment of a “Dissemination and Communication Group” (DCG) as one of the consortium’s working units is of great benefit for the project. Every project team decides to nominate a representative in the DCG, so we shall have an effective distributed team in charge of such activities as web updates and ENRI publications.

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ENRI-East Advisory Board (AB)

(Chair: Prof. Christian Haerpfer)
The Advisory Board shall be established, first, to arrange extensive international and cross-disciplinary consultations for the project and, second, to organise peer-reviews of the main project reports by external experts. The Advisory Board meets at least once a year, as a rule during the annual project consortium meetings. Its responsibilities include:

  • Overseeing quality of project deliverables (internal evaluation in a form of peer-reviews);
  • Advising and assistance on the dissemination, international discussion and promotion of project results;
  • Securing loyalty toward the project and confidentiality with regard to unpublished project deliverables and drafts

Chair of project’s Advisory Board Prof. Christian Haerpfer (Director of the IHS’ Center for Strategic Development and Reader in Political Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, UK),
Prof. Christian Haerpfer (Chair of the ENRI-East Advisory Board) is political scientist and sociologist, co-founder (with Prof. Richard Rose) of the series of New Democracies Barometer surveys. Co-author of such books as “Democracy and its alternatives: Understanding post-communist societies” (the John Hopkins University Press, 1998) and “Democratisation in a Globalazing World” (Oxford University Press, 2007). Currenly - Head of Department of Politics and International Relations (University of Aberdeen) and Director of the Center for Strategic Development (IHS-Vienna).

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ENRI-East Ethical Issues Group (EIG)

(Chair: Prof. Antal Örkény)
The Ethical issues group shall be established by the consortium to administer the ethical issues of the study in a systematic manner. It will run internal procedures of reviewing, verification and approval of each sociological tool the project has developed and is going to deploy. Ethical Issues Group produces an “Ethical conformity certificate” for each questionnaire, instruction, etc. as well as undertaking special training on ethics in the course of the first session of project’s “Spring School”.

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ENRI-East Gender equality officer (GEO)

The introduction of a position of Gender equality officer is planned following the recommendation of FP7 Guidelines and this issue shall be addressed during the first consortium meeting.

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