Evaluation of the Conflict Prevention Pools: Portfolio review

Abstract

P1. The purpose of the Portfolio Review is to describe the programmes and associated activities that are being evaluated. Since its main purpose is descriptive, it draws heavily on existing official documents as appropriate. It should be noted that Her Majesty¿s Government (HMG) has not previously commissioned a comprehensive overview of the Conflict Prevention Pools (CPPs) from the perspective required for the Evaluation. Though various forms of overview of each of the two CPPs have been prepared, the purposes and therefore the content of these have been different from the purpose at hand. P2. This brief `analytical history¿ of the Conflict Pools will provide an account of how and why the CPP¿s have developed in the way that they have. The Portfolio Review does not aim to provide the analytical framework for meeting the key objectives of the evaluation, as set out in the Terms of Reference (ToRs). This has been done in the Inception Report, and this Portfolio Review should not be read in isolation from the Inception Report. P3. The Portfolio Review provides a description of the CPPs, their funding, their projects, and their administrative processes to a level of detail appropriate to the purposes of the Evaluation and the agreed length of the document. For a document of this length (a planned 20 pages plus annexes) to address a program of more than 600 million operating in some 100 countries, and involving the interests of five separate departments of state in the UK, not to mention significant other stakeholders outside the UK, difficult choices about the scope and detail of material to be included had to be made. As we crystallize our priorities for what to include in the final version of the Portfolio Review, given the constraints of length, we would invite comments as to further material that could be included. P4. The Portfolio Review has involved London-based research, including interviews with officials as well as review of documentary sources. This work has included collection of preliminary information on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of current programming effectiveness and administration. In respect of existing CPP activities, it supplements the Inception Report as a guide to the authors of the case studies. For the Portfolio Review, we interviewed some 25 officials across five departments. The main purpose of interviews in the Portfolio Review stage was to support the effort of getting down on paper, for the first time, a comprehensive description, with an appropriate level of consistency, of all of the purposes, all of the key processes, and all of the activities of the CPPs.