Hon Speaker and hon members, the Programme to Support Pro-poor Policy Development, PSPPD, is a research and capacity-building programme which is located within the National Planning Commission of the Presidency. It is a partnership between the Presidency and the European Union. The PSPPD is a five-year programme which started in October 2006 and will end on 31 December 2011. It will then enter a six-month closure period to conduct final evaluation and final audit processes, effectively closing at the end of June 2012.
The programme was developed to improve the effectiveness of public policy interventions. To achieve this, the programme has focused on strengthening policy-making around poverty and inequality through the use of research within the social and economic clusters.
The programme has focused on promoting evidence-based policy-making through research on poverty and inequality; developing the capacity of researchers to contribute evidence to policy; developing the capacity of policy-makers to understand how to use research evidence; supporting government's monitoring and evaluation system to help it evolve in a way that contributes effectively to evidence-based policy-making; and collating, documenting and sharing examples of the use of evidence with stakeholders.
To date the programme's activities have seen the culmination of inputs and linked activities since the start of its implementation. In August this year a two-day conference was held in Gauteng where 13 research papers were presented to an audience of policy-makers and academics. In addition to this, a series of articles were published in the print media, showcasing some of the research studies for a wider audience. Also, the PSPPD funded activities that resulted in a draft National Evaluation Policy Framework, and a scoping exercise and workshop for the Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation as well as Administration was done to define citizen-based monitoring.
The PSPPD Phase 2 proposal is currently being processed by the European Commission in Brussels and a decision is awaited by the Commission on the General Budget Support programme. Thank you.