LF_planning

=Livestock and Fish CRP= =Planning Processes and Milestones=

Updated 31 January 2014

In 2014, CRP Livestock and Fish must undertake substantial planning work. This is driven in part by a requirement to comply with CGIAR planning imperatives, but also by our own desire to exploit the opportunities that the transition process offers. It also recognizes that our Theme and value chain-level strategies and implementation plans have yet to be sufficiently articulated.

The original CRP proposal was designed to run in three 3-year phases from 2012 through to the end of 2021. The first phase was to run from 2012 to 2014. The CRP mechanism is a new approach to research programming and carries with it high expectations from donors and centres alike. It is being assessed, and based on this necessary design adjustments will be made in the second phase. The time that it will take to do such assessment necessitates more time than is available in the current succession of phases. Therefore, the CGIAR and the Fund Council have introduced an interim phase for all CRPs. For Livestock and Fish CRP, this interim phase will last two years and will straddle our current phase 1 and the next phase 2. This will require additional resources over and above existing commitments, and contractually will require either a contract amendment or a new contract. Our first phase will finish at the end of 2014, the interim phase will run from 2015 through 2016, and phase 2 will start in January 2017 and will run to December 2019. For us, we therefore need to prepare now for a series of tasks as follows:

A strategy and implementation plan for 2015-2023 is the primary planning product

- CCEE-2 (to be conducted in Qtr3) - IEE (to prepare during 2014 for start in early 2015 || - Submission of 2015 POWB (end of year) - Outline of 2016 POWB ||
 * **CRP Life Cycle Stage** || **Required Actions in 2014** ||
 * Phase 1 (2012 – 2014) || - CCEE-1 (to be completed in Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania in March & April)
 * Interim Period (2015 – 2016) || - Extension proposal (by April)
 * Phase 2 (2017 to 2019) || - Submission of phase 2 proposal ||
 * CCEE =**CRP Commissioned External Evaluation
 * IEE =** Independent External Evaluation

We will therefore meet twice in this first quarter to define and enact a planning process. The intention here is to secure clarity of purpose and tasks, enable coherence, and facilitate implementation.

The events scheduled for 2014 include - February 3rd to 5th – Program Leadership Meeting to initiate the planning process; Consensus on what needs to happen - March 24th to 28th – Theme Planning Meetings (face to face) - April-June – Value chain planning meetings (to be determined) - September-October – Theme and value chain POWB planning meetings (virtual)

The first February meeting is designed to get the planning process started. This will entail some program analysis, some consensus building, some training, and definition of the planning process and next steps.

In the 7 weeks following, before the March meeting, some work will be done do collate Theme ideas. In some cases, planning work in some themes will advance more than others. However, to ensure that all plans are prepared in time and that every support is offered to enable this, a second meeting has been called in March.

In the March meeting, theme groups and value chain coordinators will meet together to plan together. Equipped with information garnered through the intervening 7 weeks, theme teams will meet to define their deliverables. The March meeting will provide a full suite of theme plans which value chain coordinators will be able to use to generate value chain plans through the 2nd quarter. The end product of the first two meetings will be the drafting of Strategy and Implementation Plana (SIP), with progress towards theme and value chain Plans of Work and Budget (POWB) for 2015 and 2016.

The SIPs will describe the contributions of each theme, value chain and cross cutting area to our overall Theory Change that describes how we reach sustainable scale. Within this, each theme, value chain and cross cutting function will similarly describe their theory of change that contributes to the program level change process.


 * __Strategy and Implementation Plans__**