Measuring Progress In Conflict Environments Mpice A Metrics Framework For Assessing Conflict Transformation And Stabilization Version 10

There has been a long standing need for "Measures of Effectiveness," as they are often called in the private sector, focused on diplomatic, military and development efforts in places prone to conflict. Traditionally, U.S. Government agencies have tended to measure outputs, such as the number of schools built, miles of roads paved, or numbers of insurgents killed. Outputs, however, measure what we do and not what we achieve. Outcomes, or "effects" as they are known in the military's glossaries, indicate the success or failure of project or mission efforts, since they seek to measure the attainment of conditions that engender stability and self-sustaining peace. The US government (particularly Department of Defense, US Institute of Peace, US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Department of State) has been actively working with a broad array of partners (multinational, NGOs and academia) to develop new capabilities for stability operations. The Measuring Progress in Conflict Environments (MPICE 'pronounced' M-Peace) project has developed an overarching framework of indicators that measure outcomes over time and across five sectors (Governance, Economics, Security, Rule of Law and Social Well-Being). The MPICE Framework is structured around determining conflict drivers and state/society institutional capacity, as conceptualized by USIP (Quest for Viable Peace), the Fund for Peace, and others. The premise states that if conflict stabilization and societal reconstruction is a process continuum spread between violent conflict and sustainable security at opposite ends, viable peace should be considered the middle or "tipping point" where external intervention forces can begin to hand over driving efforts to local forces and capacities. The MPICE Framework is intended to provide assessment teams with a capability to generate substantial insight into conflict environments and gauge progress with respect to this continuum.