UNESCO’s System of Information on Strategies, Tasks and the Evaluation of Results
(SISTER)

SISTER is a device which has been designed and developed since May 1998 to accompany the UNESCO reform process towards results-based programming. The basic structure is provided by original software that was created for this purpose, but the essence of it lies within a slow and long process of changing habits, the forms of organization, references established within the Organization.  This effort is supported by in-depth actions for concomitant technical (to master the software, 2000 civil servant were trained without recourse to any external help) and substantive training (more than 300 professionals have already been involved in the participative methods of results formulation through means of the Log frame tool).

The premise of the system lies in the definition of anticipated results, and the construction of strategies for this purpose by the persons responsible at various levels.  Thus, it rests with the higher level to define the results anticipated for each Major Programme, and to draw the strategic lines to reach that objective.  The designated persons responsible under these strategic axes subsequently define the Programme results for which they are responsible, as well as the strategic axes to reach that objective, and so on until the lowest level -- that of activities.

This process is interactive, in the sense that the proposals from each level answer to the direction of the higher level and provide for a process of a programming and budgetary negotiation.  Gradually, all aspects of the entire programme begin to take shape through reciprocal adjustments at the various levels based on agreements engaging individual’s responsibility.  These agreements are the essence of a co-operative strategy, as they determine how and under which conditions the respective results will be reached and combined in achieving the higher-level results leading towards the combined achievement of UNESCO’s mandate as defined within the biennium under consideration.

By this means, several objectives are reached:

• To build the entire Programme and Budget according to an exact logic of nested results that have been well articulated in coherent strategies;

• To create those conditions which are both necessary and sufficient for (organic) co-operation between all persons responsible from the pre-programming phase up to and including evaluation.

• To acquire a tool for the follow-up of the execution of programmes whose matrix is exactly the programme itself, as developed by all persons responsible;

• Provide an information and decision-making tool up-dated on an on-going basis with relevant budgetary and financial information, incorporated at all the required levels of responsibility, and by qualitative information introduced at regular intervals (three months) by the persons responsible themselves as an obligation exercise for their accountability which fully engages them;

• To ensure a complete and transparent integration of all the activities of the Organization, both extra-budgetary and regular programme, in order to facilitate all the information and specialized reports tasks;

• To keep a certain number of programme indicators (beneficiary groups [stakeholders], interested countries, priorities, follow-up of major conferences, etc ...) permanently up-to-date and to offer a wide variety of possibilities for the useful set of indicators pertinent to team workloads, interdisciplinarity, partners, types of expenditure, etc....

As a software conceived for the Internet, SISTER allows for direct and continuous collaboration between Headquarters and Field Offices, and even with any colleague on mission.  It contributes towards the transformation of UNESCO into an authentic universally integrated organization.

As a consultation tool, it favours a much wider opening, and in all their topicality, of the activities of the Organization to the awareness of a large audience, to start with the authorities of the Member States. 

As a working tool, it constitutes both a powerful teaching means for the evolution of persons responsible towards a working logic governed by the concepts of result and co-operative strategies, to ensure rigorous programming and serious follow-up of all levels of UNESCO’s action, and, finally to make it possible for decisions to be taken at all levels on the basis of relevant information and to allow each person to take their explicit responsibility.

Complete implementation of SISTER is based, on the one hand, on a general evolution of mentalities, itself dependent on various factors, and, on the other, as a result of the consequences of the reforms in progress of the budgetary and accounting system.

Philippe RATTE