Action Plan deliverables
The plan, which calls for more than 40 major deliverables, is on track. Among the principal achievements, by January 2008 IFAD had:
- developed and begun implementing its Strategic Framework 2007-2010, which defines IFAD’s development goals and objectives, its key principles, and the thematic areas in which it will focus its work. It also explains how IFAD will be organized and managed to enhance its impact. As both IFAD’s main policy document and a framework for its strategic management, the Strategic Framework is guiding the work of all IFAD staff members.
- developed an outline for new results-based country strategic opportunities programme (COSOPs) and guidelines for their preparation, and trained staff in their application. Together these are changing the way IFAD develops, manages and monitors its country strategies.
- developed and introduced a new quality enhancement system, which adds value to the project design process through an frank and open discussion involving both external as well as internal reviewers. A series of key success factors, derived from the Strategic Framework, provides the basis for the discussion and assessment of project quality.
- developed proposals and was preparing to pilot an arms-length quality assurance system, which will provide an independent assessment of project quality at entry.
- improved its project approval format thereby facilitating Executive Board review of projects and reducing administrative costs.
- developed and was implementing a new targeting policy to ensure that IFAD operations focus on poor rural people, their problems and opportunities, and on improving their economic livelihoods.
- developed and begun to implement two linked strategies: a knowledge management strategy to enhance IFAD’s ability to share the learning from its programmes and projects; and an innovation strategy, which will ensure that innovation is systematically mainstreamed in IFAD’s main business processes, and thus in the country programmes and the projects that IFAD supports.
- developed Learning Notes, an evolving set of briefings on key thematic areas, aimed at guiding IFAD staff members and consultants involved in programme and project development.
- developed a new supervision policy which, for the first time, gives IFAD executive responsibility for supervising the programmes and projects it finances, rather than contracting out this activity. It has also developed supervision guidelines, through which the policy is implemented, and has trained 130 staff in their application.
- evaluated its field presence pilot programme and developed an activity plan for managing its country presence initiatives in 2008.
- Prepared a first results-based programme of work and budget
- developed and started to implement a Human Resource Framework for strengthened management of human resources and their alignment with corporate priorities.
- Established a corporate Human Resources Strategic Management Committee, chaired by the President.
- identified through a participatory process IFAD’s core values and the monitorable behaviours associated with each of them, and started an exercise to ensure that the values are integrated into IFAD’s business processes and procedures.
- implemented version 1 of the Rural Poverty Portal, a web-based tool for learning and sharing knowledge about rural poverty eradication.
- developed and started to operationalise a results measurement framework for reporting on progress achieved against the hierarchy of objectives contained in IFAD’s Strategic Framework.
- Prepared a first Report on IFAD’s Development Effectiveness
