FAO’s Medium Term Plan and Programme of Work and Budget for 2014-15 presents FAO’s results framework and approach to monitoring. The framework includes five Strategic Objectives. Each objective is supported by a number of Outcomes which in turn are underpinned by Outputs.
Outcomes reflect the changes in the country-level enabling environment needed to foster the achievement of higher level Strategic Objectives. They relate to those issues at country or international level – in areas within FAO’s mandate and core functions – which could impede progress, including for example: relevance of policy and programming frameworks, level of resources and investments committed, level of coordination/partnerships and availability/use of information and data for decision making. The indicators at this level measure the extent to which countries have made the necessary reforms and established the required capacities to achieve the strategic objectives.
A set of indicators has been defined for each organizational outcome and will be monitored and reported upon every two years.
Given the nature of the Outcomes and their indicators, considerable gaps have been identified in available data sources. Consequently the data to inform the Outcome level indicators is being obtained primarily through a survey, coordinated at FAO HQ and conducted in a sample of countries where FAO provides its support in achieving the Strategic Objectives.
Purpose of the corporate baseline survey
The purpose of the Corporate Baseline Assessment was to establish the baselines for Outcome-level indicators through a survey conducted with FAO’s Country Offices and partner institutions across the Strategic Framework. The survey was part of the corporate monitoring and reporting process that FAO has put in place in the biennium 2014-15.
The data from the assessment allows us to track the changes in country level outcomes towards which FAO is expected to have an influence; and to assess FAO’s contribution to those changes at the end of each biennium.
An initial pilot survey was conducted in August-September 2013, and preliminary data was presented to Council in December 2013. Drawing on lessons from the pilot phase, an initial sample of 39 countries participated in a first phase of the assessment in early 2014, and then countries identified as “focus country” by Strategic Objectives and/or Regional Initiatives have been added to this sample to ensure an accurate representation of where FAO’s work is focused. The expansion of the corporate baseline assessment to additional 41 SO/RI focus countries produced more robust evidence and provided better information for the decision making processes at country (e.g. CPF), regional (e.g. Regional initiatives) and global levels (e.g. Strategic Framework). This exercise took place between July and September 2014. The baseline data will be used to assess changes at country level at the end of each biennium.
Results and reporting
The results of the corporate baseline survey were presented in a final report, which describes the data collection process, the methodology used and the analytic results of the baseline survey. The results were analyzed for each Strategic Objective, with a cross-regions perspective.
FAO will undertook in 2015 an end-of-biennium assessment of its current strategic plan, the Medium Term Plan 2014-2017. The Corporate Outcome Assessment (COA) will be part of the Programme Implementation Report (PIR) for the 2014-15 biennium, the FAO accountability document, that is presented to FAO’s Governance at the end of each biennium. The report will be released to member countries in early April 2016.