Performance-based full policy cycle for the digital single market

A benchmarking exercise of a number of Digital Single Market policy initiatives recently proposed by the European Commission against the performance-based policy model shows that the current policy development and assessment process could be improved markedly by following the performance-based policy model set out in the present study. The key features of a performance-based full policy cycle are a clear articulation of policy objectives, the identification and use of quantitative indicators of expected short-term and longer-term policy impacts, the identification of synergies between policies, a much greater use of quantitative data in ex-ante impact assessments, the implementation of robust, data-based, independent ex-post assessments of the performance of policies relative to their expected impacts and a wide dissemination of lessons learned in such ex-post performance assessments.