Programme Committee Guideline
Submissions to the Programme Committee
Why make a Submission to the Programme Committee?
The Programme Committee is an advisory body to which important programme matters can be taken for discussion and guidance. These may be new activities which have large budgets, are particularly risky, are trialing innovative approaches or have agency wide implications.
The benefits of bringing decisions into the committee are:
- there is agency wide commitment to support new activities
- risk is accepted and shared across the agency
- greater collective knowledge and experience informs decision making
- increased opportunities for inter-disciplinary working
- the discussions support organizational learning particularly around good practice for aid effectiveness.
What to Include in Submissions
All documentation brought to the committee should be fully appraised by at least the DPM and a subject matter specialist (either in-house or external). The committee is presented with a brief submission giving background and clarifying what decisions are required. Appended to this is the executive summary of the relevant report (e.g. design report), report recommendations and the appraisal notes. This supplements rather than replaces the ‘programme teams’ role in appraisal of new activities. See Annex 1 for the key appraisal questions that the committee could consider.