The Action Plan for Official Languages Coordination Program Summative Evaluation

1.   Introduction

1. Introduction

The federal government established the Action Plan for Official Languages Coordination Program (hereafter the “Coordination Program”) in 2003 to support the implementation of the Action Plan for Official Languages (hereafter the “Action Plan”), and particularly its Accountability and Coordination Framework. Both the Privy Council Office (now Canadian Heritage) and the Department of Justice received funding under the Coordination Program and jointly planned the summative evaluation of the Coordination Program, to be conducted in fiscal year 2007–2008. This document constitutes the final report of the summative evaluation of the Department of Justice component of the Coordination Program.

1.1. Context for the evaluation

In 2003, Treasury Board approved funding for the Coordination Program, covering five fiscal years, from 2003–2004 to 2007–2008. Participating departments jointly developed a Results-based Management and Accountability Framework (RMAF) that called for a formative evaluation of the Coordination Program to be completed in 2005–2006, and a summative evaluation to be conducted in 2007–2008. The joint formative evaluation of the Coordination Program was completed in March 2006. As for the summative evaluation, individual reports have been prepared on the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Department of Justice Canada components of the Coordination Program. This document constitutes the report prepared on the Department of Justice Canada component.

1.2. Scope and objectives of the evaluation

This summative evaluation covers activities carried out by the Department of Justice Canada during the five-year funding period associated to the Coordination Program. The evaluation addresses issues of rationale and relevance, success, cost-effectiveness, and alternatives (Appendix A includes a list of all the issues and questions that this evaluation addresses).

1.3. Structure of the report

This document contains five sections, including this introduction. Section 2 describes the Fund, and Section 3 describes the methodology used to complete this evaluation. Section 4 summarizes the findings from the evaluation, and Section 5 presents the conclusions and lessons learned.