About Decent Work Country Programmes

On this page: Initial observations • Ongoing challenges • Ensuring consistent quality

Initial observations

While the ILO is still in an early stage of implementing DWCPs, some initial observations can be made:

• Improved consultation between headquarters and the external offices in the regions. The use of DWCPs has helped the ILO to clearly identify in advance what work it is planning in a given country. The establishment of these priorities and their listing on the Integrated Resource Information System (IRIS) has provided a common frame of reference where information can be accessed at both headquarters and offices in countries. While improvements remain to be made to IRIS, the availability of this specific information is beginning to facilitate greater discussion of planned work and provide valuable information for the preparation of the Programme and Budget for 2008-09.
• More transparent linking of resources to outcomes. Initial country programme outcomes for 2006-07 have been entered into the ILO IRIS-based strategic management module on implementation planning, which tracks Office-wide regular budget allocations against country programme outcomes. This will allow the ILO to more accurately track the amount of resources spent on each outcome identified in the programme and budget.
• Realistic priorities. The preparation of DWCPs is helping to establish outcomes that are more firmly anchored to the needs and priorities of constituents, and to define more realistic outcomes by focusing on a limited number of priorities.
• Higher level impacts. The content of DWCPs is varied, reflecting the diversity of needs, country contexts, and capacities. However, in all countries tripartite participation in all stages of the process has paved the way for issues of decent work and full employment to have an impact on national development agendas and influence dialogue and collaboration with government departments, United Nations development partners and other national stakeholders. The DWCPs have also more clearly focused ILO action on a visible, distinct contribution which, wherever possible, has been incorporated in the United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) and linked to larger UNDAF outcomes.

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Ongoing challenges

While progress has been made with regard to the development and implementation of DWCPs, certain areas require further consideration and improvement:

• Stronger participation of constituents in planning for results. There is recognition that there needs to be greater involvement of constituents, particularly at the country level.
  This includes systematizing the full and effective participation of tripartite constituents throughout every stage of the results-based process.
• Working within available resources. Programme outcomes require further streamlining and focus so that they can more accurately match available resources. Both the ILO and constituents need to set limited and realistically achievable goals, and to clearly identify resource requirements, particularly from extra-budgetary resources, alongside ILO capacity. To better implement DWCPs, headquarters is also increasing its financial and technical support.
• Getting on the larger agenda. While DWCP priorities are being integrated into "higher level" agendas, more emphasis needs to be given to the incorporation and integration of DWCPs into UNDAFs. This will require a substantial and sustained effort.
• Building necessary skills. Administration of the DWCP process as a results-based management tool is demanding on ILO staff and constituents alike, and this requires an ongoing investment in capacity building and training.

Under new agreements with the Governments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, further improvements are being made to strengthen DWCPs as instruments to apply results-based management. This will involve: (i) assistance for constituents in results-based management and DWCPs, including support to evaluate the programmes and apply evaluation results; and (ii) support to ILO staff to raise the quality of DWCPs, such as the formulation of outcomes and the monitoring of implementation.

Ensuring consistent quality

DWCPs are prepared under a range of different contexts and related levels of expertise. Across the ILO, there is a need to ensure consistency in DWCP preparation and qualitative content. Regional DWCP support groups have been established under the authority of each of the regional directors, with the aim of providing a quality assurance framework and mobilizing headquarters support around DWCPs. Common terminology and criteria in development of decent work country programmes have also been recently introduced as another measure to ensure consistency across the Office in different DWCP preparatory stages.