Report on an Audit of Government's Poverty Reduction Programmes ...

The PSC therefore decided to undertake a series of evaluations of the success of Government’s Poverty ReductionProgramme. In preparation for such evaluations the PSC undertook an Audit of Government’s Poverty ReductionProgrammes and Projects, as a fi rst phase of the project, towards the end of the 2004/2005 fi nancial year.The aim of the Audit was to defi ne what are being regarded as poverty reduction programmes and projects andto categorise them, so that the universe of what programmes and projects to later include in the evaluation, couldbe defi ned. The purpose was to bring conceptual clarity and to categorise poverty programmes and projectsbecause Government’s programme is comprehensive and covers a broad range of interventions. The secondaim of the Audit was to design and populate a database containing basic information on key poverty reductionprogrammes and projects.The conceptual work of the Audit and the database that is now available, will form the basis for the series ofevaluations of these programmes and projects in the second phase of the project.2. MethodologyA review of international and South African literature was done to get an understanding of the defi nitions used todescribe the different types of poverty relief programmes and the criteria used to categorize them. Key informantinterviews were also conducted with selected national government departments. The intention of the interviewswas to get a perspective on how government offi cials defi ned poverty and what criteria they used to categorizethe different programmes and projects into the different poverty types.Before any information on the programmes and projects was collected, a database was designed to house the datacollected and to create a potential framework for future reporting on these programmes and projects. A relationaldatabase was designed that could in future be used to collect information on programmes and projects. Thiswas done through consultation with national government departments and by reviewing programme databasesalready in existence. Four main approaches were then used to collect information on programmes and projects.Firstly, the annual reports of every national and provincial department were collected and examined to identify allprogrammes and projects that were developmental, poverty relief related or of a conditional grant nature.Secondly, searches of the literature and the web were done to identify programmes and projects and to accessany information on these. Thirdly, government offi cials responsible for programmes related to poverty reliefwere contacted and information on the programmes and projects solicited. Fourthly, workshops were heldwith national and provincial departments to obtain inputs on defi nitions, criteria and data on programmes andprojects. Information received on projects belonging to programmes was then captured into databases beforebeing integrated into one overall project database.ix