The country office annual report should be the place where all comes together. No more vague strategies, frameworks and theories of change, fundraising talk, or divisional divides. Just results for children, and the important contributions UNICEF made.
Or not?
The Reality Show
Perhaps it is only me who feels tortured when reading UNICEF country office annual reports. Based on my review of 25 reports, they mainly serve to portray UNICEF as the star in its own reality show, with the poor and marginalized as the supporting cast.
On less than ten pages, the average annual report talks forty times about “UNICEF support” to someone or something, without a hint whether this support entails saying something in a meeting or spending hundred million dollars.
The reporting instructions apparently call on every office section to spin their tales on how they spent their time. There was the important study that the partners liked so much, but we are not told what the study found. We read that 100,000 families were reached with multi-sectoral and sectoral cash assistance, but not how it was done or how much money each family got. Roundtables took place with key influencers, but we are left in the dark about who they are. One office successfully influenced key national policies for child poverty reduction, but we don't know what UNICEF recommended and how the office got the government to concur. Millions of people were reached with a message, but we don't know whether it was understood and whether it made any difference. Everything was a success; nothing went wrong. Twenty years after the arrival of results-based-management, we are back to activity reporting.
The one page on “UN Collaboration and Other Partnerships” reliably lists every obscure task force that UNICEF co-convenes, attends or even chairs. UNICEF staff seem to be enthusiastic about spending their time with their colleagues from other UN and donor agencies. The average report affirms nine times that UNICEF plays a leadership role.
Lessons and Innovations
I love the lessons learned and innovations – the part where you expect reflection and analysis of what worked and what didn’t.
As it were, the section typically conveys banalities and truisms. It often appears to be written by amateurs still trying to figure out the realities of the host country. In my sample, I did not find any significant lesson, but much to be embarassed about:
- The engagement of high-level policymakers is crucial to identify and cultivate champions able to advance the case for children in policy and legislation.
- A key contributor to results … has been the analysis and use of data for programming.
- Another lesson learned is that it is crucial to have sufficient financial resources.
- Effective research, monitoring and evaluation systems are required to evaluate the impact of programmes and identify critical success factors, bottlenecks and groups left behind.
- To accelerate the reduction of wasting among young children, UNICEF will continue to support a transformative community-based structure to promote preventative nutrition interventions.
- Ensuring equitable distribution of funds ... will require a considerable amount of additional funding.
The Results Story
We know the dilemma. Development results can only be achieved by countries themselves. Countries need to go through reforms and decide where to invest. To appreciate the significance of any UNICEF contributions, the results story must be told, along the lines of:
- Here is an important issue affecting some or all children in the country.
- This is what the country had been doing about it so far; these circumstances are hastening or hindering further progress.
- This is how UNICEF helped to advance the reform; this is how much UNICEF has spent on it.
- This is what came of it, and how it will affect the lives of children.
If offices cannot produce sensible reports, UNICEF may as well replace its human chatbots with real ones.
ReplyDeleteRight on the head Detlef. Would be interesting to know how many of the COARs were written by external consultants who completed the exercises remotely without having to visit the country.
Of the 2022 link you shared, have already counted 10 that am aware consultants completed and all remotely. This seems to be a growing practice in COs of using externals given that staff members have no time to draft what they worked on and their impact.
Consultants writing the annual reports? Now that really is dismaying ...
ReplyDeleteIn spite of what all monoglot UNICEF staff believe, it is hard to learn to write in a foreign language. Most UNICEF staff are not native English speakers and don't know how to write in English, but are expected to. They spend more than half of their time struggling to put something together with mediocre results. To make matters worse UNICEF produces, at a very high cost, some of the least read material in the world. Chatbots would not only do a better job at no or low cost but would also logically allow for a large reduction in staff numbers.
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ReplyDeleteAs a Region Director I was slightly irritated we never got any feedback on our office`s Annual Reports. So one year, instead of spending lot`s of time on writing, I just cut and pasted from previous years reports and sent it off. Again, I did not get any comments. There may be a few countries for which Annual Reports matters and get attention, but I doubt there are, on average, more than 10 people in the world that read Annual Reports from Country Offices in LAC and LAC Regional Office, incl. Detlef. (One of my major achievements as RD, may well have been to change the the name of the RO from TACRO to LACRO. At least, we got an acronym that made sense.)
Couldn't agree more. I have tried to be the sheeherder during annual report season for 2 decades. And none of you should be shocked that we hire consultants to write them - what happens is this : the programme staff give their inputs as requested. As Thomas E said, many staff struggle to write perfect english so we get a mixed bag of text. Usually it is extracted from the RAM - which also collects the exact same info as the "new" COAR is not a mirror of RAM rather than the old one that had chapters on SOUTH SOUTH, INNOVATE and no space for results. Anyway, we get a messy collection of statements - we have a consultant on standby to "edit" it - mainly because the COAR is ALWAYS DUE like days after new year - during a period when almost EVERYONE takes leave. It is horrible timing -we only do that to meet an euqally horrible deadlines for the ED's annual report. IN which they may use ONE sentence of our 10 page report (or not). An agree, almost no one in the world reads COARs. I have read many as I used to glean them for "results" when I was as HQ and needed to make briefing notes or smummary- and I ready them before I apply for a job in that country so I know something. But I am not sure who else reads them. In spite of decades of RBM we still don't get it right. I think it is not the RBM knowledge as much as the quality of what we do in many countries is generally not very impressive or impactful - so we can't make a silk's purse out if a pig's ear all the time. Our challenge is we are spread all over the place. THere is nothing we won't do for some donor funding....we having "funding" hungs springing up all over and we have call after call on resource mobilisation - but not on quality programming. We need to re-think our role in countries and re-think our approach. We now have new indicators called CSI - that make us all cookie cutters - how many of us can read a COAR and NEVER know what country we are reading about? Need to re-think, re-focus - and has anyone calculated how many staff we have now at HQ or RO level - those are all people who don't deliver any results for children - yet absorb massive amounts of resources. Over 1/3 of all international staff in the world are at HQ - how does that help us deliver results? If we then move to regions - we have to remove all the staff at regional office level as bringing results . What we have is a small portion of the 16,000 staff at CO level actually trying to deliver results while spending a huge amount of time dealing with the layers at RO and HQ. It is a struggle. The average regional office now has 120 to 150 staff - including dozens of P5s and P4s - how did we manage 25 years ago when a RO had 3 or 4 staff and had a HQ desk that consisted of 1 or 2 who backstopped regions? We need to review where we place our resources and time - it can be done. But it will take a hard look at ourselves.
ReplyDeleteCompletely agree with Detlef and Bernt. Annual reports have been the same since I joined in 1975. A collegue then suggested that between the two covers of the annual report we write some rubbish and see if anyone reacts. Ofcourse we did not do it. No one reads them then and no one reads them now. Maybe not even the Rep of the country .Complete waste of precious resources to produce them. They are more a waste of time even if someone makes the attempt to read them as at best they list processes seldom describe, analyse or report results!!!
ReplyDeleteWell done Detlef. You have unleashed another set of "Hot Air Balloons" with UNICEF written on them. This will surely elicit a number of comments as we can already see. Having written, read, analyzed and summarized AR's for many years I will follow with some more comments later on. Meanwhile, one of my favourite stories is when CO's were asked to write reports "in confidence", for the attention of the ED. One of our more prolific Reps in North Africa sent in a 200 pager in French. The ED ,Mr. Labouisse, asked me to read and inform him of its most important points. As I was leaving his office he pulled out a file from his drawer, smiled and said, "by the way, here is the cover letter. You may need to read it too." It was 28 pages only !!
ReplyDeleteAt DPP, we always read the Annual Reports, mined them for information for global publications (like Innovations and Lessons Learned), collated and analyzed the data and culled highlights for the AR to the Board. Unless my memory fails me completely. Detlef can correct me if so.
ReplyDeleteAnd at ESARO, if I'm again not mistaken, we also read the 20+ ARs from the Region, year after year, and provided feedback and queries. If I'm wrong, my dear dear colleagues will correct my wishful thinking!
We also crafted the AR guidelines each year with an eye to promoting good quality and thoughtful analysis. I think we did. Or maybe this is all just in my head ...
And, yes, we asked the programme audit folks to analyse them too, and make recommendations for how the ARs could be improved.
Richard is right. When working in a country office, I was glad about the feedback from the RO. And when in DPP, we read the annual reports, provided feedback, and tried to improve the guidelines.
ReplyDeleteBut almost on the day today, 20 years ago, I shared the following thought, apparently in frustration:
Don’t you find these activity reports from the frontlines tiring and annoying?
That’s why we development workers know that we have to report on results, to donors, to our Executive Boards, to the public, and to our bosses.
Many of us find it difficult. That’s why inter-agency task forces have been formed to simplify and harmonize reporting formats and schedules. But it doesn’t seem to get better.
Because reporting is the last link in a chain that starts with results-based programme planning and continues with results-based management.
In other words, where there aren’t any results, don’t try to report on them.
Taking off from Detlef’s “ where there aren’t any results, don’t try to report on them”. So true! How many of have read reports that were honest enough to say we did not achieve the expected results because………Instead we resorted to fudging around and not sure how to phrase the government’s disinterest or low capacity for implementation. Despite all the comments on COARs above, they did serve a purpose if the Unicef country team used the exercise to evaluate their performance in achieving results.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to another round of discussions on “Travel reports”. :):)
Sree
Detlef, interesting reading. I was not directly involved in UNICEF programs but can imagine that reporting about a lousy program-implementation e.g. because a government counterpart did not do what was agreed upon might be honest but not easy to do if you have a family and need to keep the job.
ReplyDeleteAs in my job with UNICEF in GCO (Greeting Card Operation) or later called PSD (Private Sector Fundraising) many program officers I met during my 20 years with UNICEF often appeared to me as lonely fighters to get some programs for children going with government counterparts where many seemed not to be very interested at all.
To end my comment with a positive note: During my time in Brazil, the UNICEF office had established a price (USD 1500?) per year for the reporter or editor who wrote the best and/or the most articles in local newspapers about children needs and programs in the country. I found this a very effective way of reaching out to the public and governmental officers, as well. It`s just a small sample even if the positive effect cannot be counted for in numbers...
It certainly helped me and my small team to sell greetings cards and other products to contribute to UNICEF programs. We had to and could account our sales per year in numbers and USD...
Like many development agencies, the reporting and processing requirements are so onerous that a certain level of de-skilling has taken place and so we have to situation where consultants are hired to write the TORs to then initiate the process to hire more consultants. If the mangement processes in the CO and teams captured the critical information -- which also includes analysis of failures and lessons learned as a regular feature of work, then the AR would be a lot easier to develop as it rolls up what is already an integral part of the work processes. In a culture where only the huge gains are celebrated, people will adapt to these signals and report or perhaps over report gains. There is also the depressing data on the quality of evaluations/reports that emanate from the org...People will surely own the process, when it is truly a learning process and not one that rewards the few high flyers. There are in built incentives to inflate and under report. But perhaps that was 10 years ago, and things are now much improved. If it is any consolation, some of the bilaterals and certainly the large NGOs are no better...but that should be scant comfort.
ReplyDeleteThought provoking as always Detlef. One point - in the latest UNICEF parlance, I believe what's published publicly is the Summary Narrative (public), while the COAR includes this and also several other products (RAM (data+narrative, CSIs, etc).
ReplyDeleteHaving just read through a COAR Summary Narrative AND a RAM narrative for a UNICEF CO in Africa, I would want to push back a little and say that when you get to read a RAM Narrative what you get is much more granular and more honest about challenges and failures. At the same time, it's a much richer document, and even for a skeptical mind, I was quite impressed by the breadth and scale of UNICEF work. You feel you are getting much more direct access to the programme section chiefs. Much of this work is unknown outside the country. For sure, what comes out in the Summary Narrative can end up being a bit bland and PC.