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Preface

The Sectoral Involvement in Departmental Policy Development (SIDPD) is a five year $28.5 million program aimed at creating a closer policy development relationship between the federal government and the voluntary sector. The purpose of the SIDPD was: a) to enhance policy development in departments by strengthening opportunities for input by voluntary sector organizations; and b) to strengthen policy capacity within the voluntary sector to contribute to departmental policy development. SIDPD was a major element of the Voluntary Sector Initiative (VSI). Its budget represented over 30 percent of the total VSI budget of $94.6 million.

As with the VSI, the SIDPD was co-ordinated by the Voluntary Sector Task Force at the Privy Council Office. In October 2002, at the end of Phase I of the initiative, management responsibility for the coordination of the VSI including the SIDPD was transferred to Canadian Heritage. It was at that point that evaluation work was undertaken to examine certain operational delivery and process issues, in particular to document the status of the projects and to review the process used to deliver the initiative including the process modifications of the SIDPD projects and to provide lessons learned on progress in achieving SIDPD's objectives. The process evaluation was conducted in order (a) to comply with Treasury Board guidelines ensuring Parliament is adequately informed about the results achieved from the expenditure of public funds; and (b) to provide an important base on which to build a more in-depth impact evaluation analysis described below.

In 2003 as the evaluation progressed at Canadian Heritage and the final report was nearing completion, the program once again moved from one department to another. As a result of the December 2003 realignment of departments the VSI, including the SIDPD functions, was transferred to the newly created Social Development Canada (SDC). The program arrived at SDC with a fully completed process evaluation of the SIDPD which needed to be approved for publication.

The SIDPD is very much a unique initiative; it is essentially a co-managed experiment at building a policy development relationship in the social development field between the federal government and the voluntary sector. Essentially, the process evaluation undertaken focuses on exploring the policy development relationship and governance structures emerging between the federal government and the voluntary sector and how these have been improved by the processes associated with the implementation and delivery of the SIDPD.

To supplement the current evaluation findings, Social Development Canada is about to commence a more in-depth evaluation of the longer-term impact effects resulting from SIDPD. Specifically the following key areas will be the focus of future work:

i) What has been the value-added to the federal government operations and activities as a result of the SIDPD?

ii) Similarly what has been the value-added from the Sector's perspective? and

iii) What have been the benefits for social development processes across Canadian society as a whole?

In addition to the above, the other standard evaluation requirements set out in the Treasury Board Policy on Evaluation will also be addressed.

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