Diplomacy, Trade, and International Assistance Coherence in the Europe, Arctic, Middle East and Maghreb Branch, 2017-18 to 2022-23 – Evaluation summary
About the evaluation
¶¶ÒùÊÓƵ’s Evaluation Division conducted a thematic evaluation of the Europe, Arctic, Middle East and Maghreb Branch (EGM) that examined coherence across business lines, including diplomacy, trade, and international assistance, covering the period 2017-18 to 2022-23. It is the last in a series of 4 geographical coherence evaluations. Its main objectives were to provide an assessment of the extent to which the EGM Branch operated in a coherent manner across business lines and to examine the factors that either fostered or impeded this coherence.
Key findings
- Leadership was vital to coherence and most impactful on the ground where the connections between business lines were most visible and needed.
- HQ executive staff with previous cross-stream experience were better equipped to provide tangible and operational guidelines to their teams, and Heads of Missions were a key point of convergence for business lines in the branch.
- Mandated joint initiatives provided clear messaging on priorities and goals; without which coherence took a less efficient ad hoc approach.
- Planning and strategy were conflated to mean the same thing across EGM branch.
- Coherence was not well understood nor interpreted in the same way; creating missed opportunities for strategic integration points across streams.
- Regional and countries strategies were relatively uncommon across the branch. When they were present, they made priority and planning exercises more effective.
- A reliance on annual planning exercises and Strategia were primarily stream-specific with short-term goals and made coherence less purposeful.
- Corporate systems were limited in their contributions to integrated planning, reporting or sharing of information across streams (except for SharePoint).
- Staff capacity to undertake coherent work was challenged by limits to time and a high degree of urgency in core responsibilities.
Recommendations
- EGM should identify opportunities to create structured processes and operational approaches that build coherence through improved communication and engagement between business lines, at the country or regional level, where appropriate.
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