PC 90/4

Programme Committee

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

II. General Considerations

III. Strategic Framework

IV. Proposal

V. Decisions Sought

Annex I
Annex II

I. Introduction

1. Further to the initial discussion of the above topic at the last session, the present document has been prepared in order to respond to the Committee’s request to benefit from further analysis of the:

“information requirements, arrangements and procedures which could enhance the involvement of the Membership, in particular the Programme Committee itself, in priority setting and enable the Programme Committee to strengthen its advice to the Council.”

2. It should be recalled that a sample document (included as Annex I) presenting a compendium of views on priorities as expressed by Members was communicated to, and welcomed by the Committee which felt that it could serve as a useful source of information to facilitate priority setting.

3. Accordingly, this document proposes a course of action and related procedural arrangements, with a view to supporting more focused discussions on relative priorities among the various activities and disciplines covered by FAO under its Programme of Work, particularly in the context of the Medium Term Plan (MTP).

4. In addition, a document will be presented to a subsequent session dealing with possible improvements to the internal methods within the Secretariat which could facilitate the process of prioritising resource proposals at Programme Entity level.

II. General Considerations

5. The Committee’s role in priority setting is unique and is established in General Rule XXVI. 7(a) (ii):

7. The Programme Committee shall have the following functions:

(a) to review:

(i) the current activities of the Organization;

(ii) the summary and draft Programme of Work and Budget of the Organization for the ensuing biennium, particularly with respect to:

• content and balance of the programme, having regard to the extent to which it is proposed that existing activities be expanded, reduced in scope or discontinued;
• the extent of coordination of work between the different technical divisions of the Organization and between the Organization and other international organizations;
• the priorities to be given to existing activities, extension of such activities and to new activities.

6. As the Committee is aware, during any given biennium, Members can formally express views on the priorities they wish to see addressed in the Programme of Work of the Organization, taking advantage of a number of instances:

• the sessions of the Conference and Council;
• the sessions of the Programme and Finance Committees;
• the meetings of Technical Committees such as the Committee on Agriculture (COAG), the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) and the Committee on Forestry (COFO) - in this case, interventions are obviously generally restricted to the respective sectors covered by these Committees; and
• the Regional Conferences.

It may be noted that additional sources of guidance to the Secretariat and the Governing Bodies for the formulation of the Programme of Work, are constituted by a number of other inter-governmental instances or technical advisory bodies, while this guidance is generally more narrowly focused and relevant to the “micro” level, assisting in the design of specific programme entities or outputs.

7. The Council, of course, reviews the reports of its Technical Committees, but does not have much time to distil the programmatic implications of the advice received from them, except in rather generic terms¹. It also obtains feedback from the Regional Conferences via an information document submitted to its session in off-Conference years, but the latter does not seem to be often referred to. The Programme Committee does not normally receive direct feedback from the deliberations of either the Technical Committees or the Regional Conferences, unless there is a mention of a specific request in such forward-planning documents as the Medium Term Plan (MTP) or the Programme of Work and Budget (PWB).

8. Hence, the interest expressed by the Committee in being more systematically apprised of the conclusions and recommendations of these bodies in order to facilitate its own advisory role, bearing in mind also that such guidance plays a key role during internal discussions leading to proposals in the MTP and PWB, is understandable.

9. While providing important and relevant information, it must be stressed that compendia of views from Members derived from the reports of Technical Committees or Regional Conferences and from the Verbatim Records available for the Sessions of the Council and Conference, may entail significant drawbacks, in not fully reflecting a comprehensive view of the preferences of the whole Membership as to priorities, e.g.:

• they may be biased in favour of specific areas, because of items put on the agenda of any given session;
• they unavoidably tend to give prominence to positions expressed in the most vocal interventions, at the expense of “silent majorities”;
• they may only reflect highly topical concerns of Members, who feel compelled to highlight these concerns because of the opportunity to share them with other Members in FAO fora, therefore understating the continued high support the same Members may have to other priorities, the importance of which may be “taken for granted”.

10. A good example is perhaps the Global Information and Early Warning System (GIEWS) which was regularly stressed as a high priority activity during interventions in the 90’s, when the system was still developing. It is much more rarely alluded to nowadays, probably because of its proven record of usefulness – but it is questionable whether such silence can be interpreted as the assignment of lower priority to the activity. Another example is statistics, which all Members support but seldom highlight in their interventions, unless driven by a specific item of the agenda. Therefore, it would seem useful that these compendia be critically analysed by the Secretariat, with a view to drawing attention to those programmes on which no view has been expressed.

11. In relation to its central advisory role to the Council on relative priorities, the Committee may also wish to take account of the changed circumstances stemming from the decisions of the FAO Conference in 1999. General Rule XXVI.7 quoted above, does not take into account the new Planning Framework approved as part of the Strategic Framework by the Conference in November 1999. In particular, the revamped MTP should embody the primary instance where major programmatic decisions are to be made by both the Secretariat and Governing Bodies (including the selection and proposed scope of component “entities”). The Committee does review the MTP document at its Autumn Session of non-Conference years, but it would seem that it could usefully devote more time during the two scheduled sessions of the same year for discussing relative priorities with a view to advising the Secretariat and the Council, both prior to the finalization of the MTP (in the May Session) and upon receipt of the MTP document (in the September Session).

12. In effect, such a role is largely foreseen in the rules of procedures of the Committee, as Rule II.2 a) reproduced hereafter indicates (despite somewhat outdated language):

2. a) At the session or sessions held by the Committee in the first year of the biennium, the Committee shall:

(i) review the current activities of the Organization and the programme aspects of the current United Nations Development Programme;

(ii) consider the long-term programme objectives of the Organization in the light of the suggestions of the Conference, of the commissions and technical committees of the Conference, and of regional and other technical conferences.

13. Therefore, there is a strong implication that the Programme Committee should exercise a kind of “arbitration” role amongst the views on priorities, as may be expressed by Members in a variety of fora.

14. In this connection, the Committee may recall that in non-Conference years it carries out a cycle of “programme reviews” (in fact extending over two biennia) covering the six Major Programmes conventionally taken to constitute FAO’s “substantive work”, i.e. those in Chapter 2: Technical and Economic Programmes and Major Programme 3.1 Policy Assistance.

15. Members of the Committee have often stressed the usefulness of these cyclical reviews (as some have put it: “particularly to facilitate deeper understanding of these programmes by new Members, given the natural turnover which occurs over time”). However, these reviews are stretched over two biennia, so that the comments made on specific programmes or activities at some sessions are inevitably incomplete in coverage and can become superseded by subsequent developments. Moreover, taking each Major Programme in turn, may militate against appreciating the necessary trade-offs, which an assessment of relative priorities should entail. This could lead the Committee to consider a possible alternative use of its time, as proposed below.

III. Strategic Framework

16. A clear omission in the above analysis is that it does not address the relative importance of FAO’s Corporate Strategies or Strategic Objectives as approved by the Conference in November 1999.

17. On the one hand, it may be argued that it is not practicable to establish priorities between these high level inter-disciplinary aims. On the other hand, if no effort is made to discuss their relative importance to the Membership from one biennium to the next, then one of the main functions of the Framework, which is to guide the Organization in its work, would be lost, at least at the Governing Body level.

18. One way in which to rectify this potential omission would be to ensure that the Committee receives a broad review of the recent history of resource allocations by Strategic Objectives along with a narrative from the Secretariat, analyzing recent changes in the external environment which might affect the focus of FAO’s work for the coming medium-term planning period. The Committee could then discuss the various aspects and recommend, at least in general terms, the direction in which FAO should be moving.

IV. Proposal

19. It is proposed that in non-Conference years – besides its usual evaluation-related work load and the standing items on its agenda – the Committee would no longer carry out the above cyclical programme reviews, but would devote instead a significant part of the two scheduled sessions to discussions of relative priorities, firstly to inform the MTP preparation process, and secondly to more fully assess the validity of substantive priorities reflected in the MTP proposals.

20. To facilitate this discussion, the Committee would be provided with a document covering three aspects:

• an analysis of the balance of resource allocations between Strategic Objectives;
• a Summary of Priorities as expressed by Members; and
• the results of a “gap” analysis highlighting programmes on which no priority has been expressed.

21. The first part of the document, which would be presented to the May Session in non-Conference years, would present data on the relative resource allocations to each Strategic Objective and each Corporate Strategy, preferably over a period of time (this will be easier as more history is built up). Data will also be provided on the respective contributions from each Major Programme. The section would include, as mentioned above, an analysis of the external environment (e.g. changes in political, social, economic and/or technological conditions) which might imply a change in the focus of FAO’s Programmes and, further down the line, to priorities between programme entities.

22. The second part would consist of a summary of priorities, as expressed by Members at the major FAO inter-governmental instances. This would be progressively developed, as follows:

• at the May session, the summary would cover the deliberations of the last Conference and Council sessions, as well as those of the Technical Committees of the Council (which would have all been held in the preceding year);
• at the September session, the summary would be augmented by covering the deliberations of the Regional Conferences (which normally take place in the first half of the year).

23. It is suggested that, while the Secretariat would seek to synthesize this mass of information to keep it to reasonable size, it would also provide as necessary interpretative statements on its understanding of the intent of individual recommendations or requests, particularly when they are of a generic nature. Efforts also would be made to assess the programmatic impact of recommendations and requests on the Programme of Work of FAO.

24. To the extent possible, the same categorization would be used, as in the sample provided to the Committee at its last session (reproduced in Annex I for the convenience of Members), that is:

1. General Priorities supported by a broad spectrum of members, including both developing and developed countries;
2. High Priority Areas – supported by the majority of developing countries;
3. High Priority Areas – supported by the majority of developed countries;
4. Priorities underlined by the Members of a specific region;
5. Priorities supported by one or more countries, but not explicitly by any regional group.

25. Therefore, if accepted, the relevant part of the document for the year 2004, in its cumulative second version, would have the coverage, as indicated in Annex II.

26. As indicated above, the third part of the document would be the result of a “gap” analysis which compares the existing programme in its entirety based upon the most recent MTP to the compendium of priorities, and derives a list of programmes or programme entities on which no prioritization has been expressed. This part would be developed for the May Session of the Programme Committee in non-Conference years.

27. The Committee’s role would be to:

• provide advice to the Council and the Director-General on whether, in its view, the balance of resources allocated to the Corporate Strategies or Strategic Objectives should be amended to respond to changes in the external environment;
• endorse the contents of the compendium of priorities (as amended if it so wishes) as a fair interpretation of the views of Members; and
• assign relative priorities to those programmes on which no view had so far been expressed possibly using the same categorization as described in para. 23 above.

V. Decisions Sought

28. The Committee is asked to determine whether this proposal is likely to meet its needs in terms of strengthening its role in priority setting and, in particular, in ensuring its full participation in the process.

29. Should the Committee agree to the proposal, it may wish to recommend to the Council, the suspension of the Programme Reviews for one biennium so as to allow the Committee to allocate more time to the priority setting process and to the review of such priorities as expressed in the MTP.

Annex I

Table 1. Summary of Priorities as expressed by Conference and Council

Annex II

Summary of Priorities expressed by Members, as Derived from Official Records of the Main FAO Inter-governmental Bodies

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¹ It is recalled that in the last two biennia, an additional information document was prepared by the Secretariat to advise the Council on the impact of recommendations in terms of eventual resource requirements.

² Present to May 2004 Session.

³ Present to May 2004 Session.

⁴ Present to September 2004 Session.