2023-2026 Strategic Plan
DPPA issued its 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, which comes at a challenging moment, as multiple threats to global peace and security are converging. The Plan provides a framework to guide the Department’s work for the next four years in conflict resolution, prevention, management, peacebuilding and sustaining peace. Together with the New Agenda for Peace, the Strategic Plan will guide us in the years ahead.
The goals and strategic objectives of the Plan reflect the progress made by the Department in recent years. We will continue to balance crisis response and diplomacy with longer-term prevention and peacebuilding engagement, prioritizing our impact in the field.
The new Plan further articulates our lead role in devising and coordinating political strategy across the UN system.
The Plan retains a risk-reduction model that refuses the binary approach of “success” and “failure” and instead examines the extent to which DPPA has contributed to a diminishment in the risks of violence across a wide range of settings and timeframes, and in conjunction with other actors.
Theory of Change
DPPA’s Strategic Plan is based on the following Theory of Change:
If DPPA deploys the full range of its resources based on cross-cutting analysis, in collaboration with others within the UN system and in partnerships with regional, national, and local stakeholders, drawing on an internal culture shaped by a commitment to learning and innovation, it will contribute to the prevention and resolution of violent conflict and to sustainable peace.
Implementation of the Strategic Plan
Divisional work plans bring the Strategic Plan to life. Divisions use the work plans to translate the medium-term objectives of the Plan into annual priorities. As a key management tool, divisional work plans are used as a basis for regular reporting on how the Department is performing against the goals set out in the Strategic Plan.
The implementation of the Plan will also be contingent on extra-budgetary resources. The DPPA Strategic Plan 2023-2026 is accompanied by a new Multi-Year Appeal, calling for $170 million over the next four years.
Monitoring and reporting
DPPA’s Strategic Plan is accompanied by a Results Framework to assist in the monitoring and evaluation of the Department’s performance in the period 2023-2026. The Results Framework not only allows tracking of results but also supports horizontal coherent planning across all DPPA divisions.
In addition to internal monitoring, DPPA also tracks recommendations stemming from evaluations and audits from several external oversight bodies such as the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), Joint Inspection Unit (JIU), and the UN Board of Auditors.
Evaluation
Central to the Secretary-General’s reforms is enhanced effectiveness of mandate delivery, improved transparency and strengthened accountability for results. The reform places emphasis on senior management leadership to strengthen the UN’s accountability mechanisms, support results-based management and build a strong culture of self-evaluation. To that end, DPPA is committed to ensure that results-based management and self-evaluations are embedded in our work.
For accountability and learning purposes, the Department conducts several evaluative exercises such as After-Action Reviews, Lessons Learned studies and self-evaluations. All evaluations and lessons learned studies are conducted as per the Department’s annual Learning and Evaluation Plan.
We provide timely responses to queries and contribute to audits and evaluations from internal and external oversight bodies, such as the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) and the UN Board of Auditors.
As a member of the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG), the Department adheres to its norms and standards. In spirit of transparency, the Department will be systematically disseminating executive summaries of its self-evaluations and lessons learned studies, if sharing of full reports is not feasible. The Department also commits to tracking the implementation of all of the recommendations stemming from its self-evaluations.
A DPPA-DPO joint Peace and Security Pillar Guidance Development and Learning Steering Committee (GLDSC) serves as the governing mechanism to implement DPPA’s evaluation policies, review priorities for evaluation exercises and monitor implementation of recommendations emanating from self-evaluations in DPPA.