Examples of technical and policy support to country programme and partner government strategies existed in each practice area and included: advisory support to the MDG Acceleration Framework in more than 40 countries; support to transitional justice in Arab States and in Latin America and the Caribbean; support to human rights institutions; capacity and governance assessments; and e-governance in several countries. There were instances of policy advice to regional institutions and regional agendas. For example, in the area of HIV and AIDS, the Global Programme successfully facilitated a regional dialogue programme under the aegis of the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, providing catalytic guidance to members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The Global Programme also supported SADC in developing a results framework for mainstreaming HIV into strategic non-health sectors, including environment, infrastructure, justice, local governance, and planning and finance. Support to strengthening human rights institutions was another example, through partnership with ASEAN. Technical backstopping support comprised a predominant part of Global Programme advisory services. Support was most useful in filling staffing gaps and facilitating project implementation. In the Bangkok, Dakar and Johannesburg regional service centres, advisory support to country offices had a considerable component of technical backstopping, followed by policy advisory work. In Latin America and the Caribbean and in Europe and the CIS, reduced country office capacity led to higher demand for Global Programme assistance with preparation of documentation—including the United Nations Development Assistance Framework and country programme and project documents— than to programming strategy advice. Interviews with country office staff revealed that limited availability of advisory services often discouraged
country offices from engaging regional advisers in longer-term strategic work. The country office survey yielded similar feedback.82 Consultations offered a potentially useful way to predict demand for advisory services and identify specific country office needs. The Advisory Service Tracker was developed based on the Bangkok and Bratislava regional centres’ experiences. The actual use of the tracker, however, varied among regional service centres. The Bangkok, Bratislava and Panama centres used the tracker; Bangkok and Bratislava also used indicators—such as number of service requests, type and scope of services delivered and country office feedback—to monitor the efficiency of advisory service delivery, but country offices did not always update the tracking system. At the time of this evaluation, the Advisory Service Tracker had yet to be used in BDP or in the Africa and Arab States regional centres, though advisory services provided were documented. Advisory support provided through short missions was often not effective. Predominantly, visits were brief and without follow-up, limiting the effectiveness of advisory inputs. Advisers faced competing obligations and were not in a position to dedicate time to a single activity or office. Value addition was seen when expertise was not locally available. Follow-up interviews indicated that advisory staff also contributed a corporate perspective, of which local consultants were seldom aware, hence even when local consultants were hired, adviser inputs remained valued. However, country offices were critical of the lack of country specificity in advisory services and of the inability to provide a global perspective applicable to the local context. The view that advisory services followed a templated approach that did not provide options for tailoring it to country needs was among the most frequently mentioned reasons for low satisfaction with advisory services. Country offices needed
Programming strategy, workshops and training, referral and support services topped the most frequent list, ranking at 3.7 on a four-point scale (of low to high rate), followed by research and analysis at 2.93 and policy support at 2.41.
82
C H A P T E R 4 . G L O B A L P R O G R A M M E C O N T R I B U T I O N T O S T R AT E G I C P L A N G O A L S
43