BIRN Network Hub 2022-2024

Some results on the regional level included 36 journalists trained as part of BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting, setting up of regional network of IT experts on data protection; conference on transitional justice with prosecutors from Bosnia, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Many, or most results are at the national level, and includes for example BIRN Albania's organization of five roundtables with civil society and journalists on environment (Dec 2022); BIRN Albania's maintenance of its Criminal Assets Database. BIRN Montenegro was set up early 2023, which means that BIRN now has country presence in all of the six western Balkan countries that Sweden's regional strategy focus on (Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia and Montenegro). OSCE (Bosnia) and BIRN initiated dialogue and collaboration on hate speech investigations. Forwarding of funds/sub-granting to media outlets and CSO for capacity support "expanded significantly" in 2022. Due to challenges to follow up third parties implmentation of activities led to BIRN scaling up monitoring systems and has now consolidated a new grant making system.

For the coming three years, the objectives of BIRN are the following: IMPACT: The society upholds democratic values and freedoms allowing citizens equal opportunities to make informed choices and hold governments accountable Outcome Objective 1: Access to accurate information increased and people in power kept accountable Outcome Objective 2: Democratic processes strengthened and public enabled to make informed decisions, demand or influence change Outcome Objective 3: Media and CSOs transformed and empowered with skills and knowledge to efectively address public interests Outcome Objective 4: BIRN's journalistic archive and tools used for further examination, advocacy and learning Outcome Objective 5: BIRN grew into a learning and knowledge sharing organisation promoting high-quality journalism production and good governance. Under each one of the five outcome objective, BIRN has identified "bridging objectives" defining more specifically what should be achieved. As a complement to this overarching framework for planned impact and outcome objectives, BIRN has formulated a results assessment framework where follow up indicators have been identified. Most of the indicators are quantitative. After discussions with Sida during the assessment phase, some more qualitative indicators have been added to the results assessment framework.