Secretary-General Ban Reports on Operational Activities for Development

New York, 4 February 2010 – The report of the Secretary-General on operational activities for development was submitted to UN Member States on 22 December 2009.

The Secretary-General was to present the report, along with his proposal on the new gender entity, today, 4 February, at the first meeting of informal consultations in the plenary on System-wide Coherence.

Following today’s meeting, Member States reportedly will begin extensive consultations on the key areas of System-wide Coherence, facilitated by Ambassador Tiina Intelmann of Estonia and Ambassador Ghazi Jomaa of Tunisia.

Below is a summary of the Secretary-General’s report, “Follow up to General Assembly Resolution 63/311 on System-wide Coherence related to operational activities for development.”

Overview

The report on operational activities for development covers four outstanding areas of System-wide Coherence:

• Governance of operational activities for development,
• Funding of operational activities for development,
• Delivering as One, and
• Harmonization of business practices.

(A fifth key area, strengthening the UN’s gender architecture, was addressed in a separate proposal issued on 6 January (see ReformtheUN.org Latest Development #334).)

In the GA’s 63rd Session (2008-2009), the membership held extensive consultations on System-wide Coherence, based in part on reports and proposals from the Secretariat.

This year, in response to the GA’s September 2009 request, the Secretary-General followed up to his previous reports on four key areas by presenting them to Member States in a single “package” report.

Governance of Development Operations

Resolution 63/311 requested the Secretary-General to provide actionable proposals on improving governance of the UN’s operational activities for development, including how country programs may contribute to these efforts.

Secretary-General Ban advised Member States to build their discussions around the issues rather than specific governing bodies. He highlighted current challenges and weaknesses in governance and provided a framework of a possible way forward.

Area	Challenge	Possible Way Forward
Cooperation between UN governing bodies (GA, ECOSOC, the Executive Boards of the funds and programs, etc)	(a) Lack of coherent governance system	Increase synergy in the UN’s work by reviewing existing legislation and relevant resolutions on the roles of GA, ECOSOC, and Executive Boards of the funds and programs.
	(b) System-wide policy guidance	“Strengthen the role of the GA in establishing overall strategies, polices and priorities of UN operational activities for development.”
	(c) Ambiguity in coordination of operational activities by ECOSOC	Define and improve the role of ECOSOC in providing leadership and policy coordination for the UN development system.
	(d) System-wide policy implementation	Ensure more effective implementation of system-wide policies at level of the executive boards and governing bodies of specialized agencies.
(2) Participation by countries in governing bodies	Equal participation and voice in governance	Strengthen participation of national policymakers dealing with the UN system at the country level.
(3)  Organizational arrangements	Secretariat support services	Improve UN Secretariat support capacities through various reviews and feedbacks on current arrangements.
(4) Impact of intergovernmental decisions	(a) Lack of adequate information for decision-making process	Improve information flow between UN Development Group (UNDG) and Member States, including by creating a central repository of information on UN development operations.
	(b) Policy dialogue process	Strengthen coordination between Member States and UN decision-makers on priority issues.
	(c) intergovernmental negotiations	“Make deliberative and negotiation process in governing bodies more action-oriented through better definition of key operational criterion and analysis of field-level realities.”
	(d) Evaluation of system-wide policies	Establish system-wide evaluation function.

The Secretary-General further emphasized that for Member States to achieve tangible results on governance, they will need to take action in several areas, including ensuring greater cooperation and clarity at the national and headquarter levels, and improved operational capacities.

Country Programs

In regard to country programs, the Secretary-General suggested that common country programs:

• Focus on existing intergovernmental bodies with the purpose of making the UN’s development system more effective and efficient;
• Be inclusive of all UN development system entities and maintain the institutional and constitutional arrangements;
• Be responsive to national ownership and aligned with national strategies; and
• Strengthen the alignment between country program documents and national strategies (to improve results-based planning and management).

Funding for Development Operations

GA Resolution 63/311 stressed the importance of effective and efficient funding for development, and it expressed with concern the continuing imbalance between core and non-core contributions for development operations.

Financial Reporting

The Assembly requested the Secretary-General in cooperation with Chief Executive Board for Coordination (CEB) to provide modalities on how to improve the UN’s financial reporting system, as well as to prepare the analysis and actionable proposals on the current situation with core and non-core funding for the UN development system.

The Secretary-General reported that:

• The UN Development Group (UNDG) is “forming a working group charged with simplifying and harmonizing financial reporting by creating common guidelines to be used by the UN entities in classifying expenditures;”
• The UNDG has created a system-wide database on multi-donor trust funds; and
• The analysis of the current situation with core and non-core funding and its predictability will be addressed in the 2010 Statistical Compendium, which will focus on strengthening reporting on extra-budgetary resource flows.

The Secretary-General also informed Member States that financial reporting of the UN’s development activities will be improved through the following measures:   

• Keeping track of all contributions and expenditures of the UN’s development operations for a reporting year;
• Strengthening policy analysis in a statistical compendium;
• Enhancing on-line access to funding information; and
• Publishing aggregate funding figures for the UN’s development operations.

Central Repository on Operational Activities for Development

The General Assembly further requested the Secretary-General to create a central repository of information on operational activities for development, “ which, as outlined in the 22 December report, will become part of a system-wide financial statistics database and reporting system, aimed at enhancing the scope and detail of existing financial reporting to Member States.

The Central Repository of Information will:

• Enable better access for Member States, inter-agency and coordination bodies, to comprehensive, reliable, and manageable financial information on the entire UN system and thus better information flow on extra-budgetary contributions to the UN; and
• Contribute directly to diffusing and making available to all stakeholders, the “knowledge capital” generated at the UN.

The expected timeline for launching the Repository is as follows.

• First launch expected in early 2010. (Financial analysis and charts consolidated from several reports of the Secretary-General (2002-2009) will be published at the centralized web.)
• The second and final phase is expected to launch at the same time as the first one and has an estimated time frame for completion of two years. The centralized collection and analysis of financial data is expected to take place during this phase.

Delivering-as-One: Independent Evaluation of Lessons Learned

The GA’s September 2009 Resolution acknowledged the progress made by the “Delivering as One” pilot programs so far, and it noted that several challenges remain. It requested the Secretary-General to “urgently undertake arrangements for an independent evaluation of lessons learned … and to inform the GA of modalities and terms of reference of this independent evaluation” within the 64th Session (before September 2010).

In his report, the Secretary-General addresses the purpose, timing and scope of the evaluation and makes some proposals for its management. He suggests that “management arrangements” be decided first, followed by developing terms of reference, “so that the process can be fully transparent, inclusive, objective and independent.”

Ban proposes the following details for the evaluation:

Purpose	Feed into the quadrennial comprehensive policy review of the Assembly (QCPR) Contribute to GA consultations on System-wide Coherence
Timing	Commence around July 2010 or end 2010  Finish by mid-2011 or end-2011 (as suggested in the quadrennial comprehensive review)
Scope	Draw lessons learned from program country pilots Cover both process and results
Management Options	(1)     Identify an existing evaluation function that has the mandate to deliver an exercise of this nature, such as the Joint Inspection Unit (2)     Establish an ad hoc group to oversee the evaluation process (in which case, a professional secretariat should be set up to support the management group
Funding	Depends on the scope and management option adopted

Finally, the Secretary-General stressed the importance of avoiding duplication or overlap by country-led and independent evaluations. To this end, the independent evaluation should build on the progress of the country-led evaluation, which is expected to conclude by 1 July 2010. 

Harmonization of Business Practices

The GA requested the Secretary-General to continue working with CEB to improve “harmonization of business practices” of the UN development system, and to regularly inform ECOSOC of progress. The Secretary-General reported that:

• The CEB is leading efforts to simplify and harmonize business practices within the UN development system through a Plan of Action for Harmonization of Business Practices in the UN system. The Plan of Action (endorsed in 2007, based on experiences in the pilot countries) aims to increase coherence between working methods of UN organizations, as well as to enhance their capacity to delivering better programmatic results for lower operational costs. In 2009, Member States were briefed on progress in this area. Further harmonization is required, including exploring new funding for implementing the Plan of Action.
• To ensure a constant flow of information and updates to Member States and interested actors, the CEB website soon will have a dedicated section on progress on harmonizing business practices.

 

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