ROI Institute Supports UNSSC in New Workshop for RBM

This workshops supports UN program managers and professionals tools they can use to measure relevant indicators of program success.

Birmingham, Alabama, October 26, 2009 – Dr. Patti Phillips has been working with the UN System Staff College (UNSSC), Turin, Italy, to develop a comprehensive measurement and evaluation course that supports UN results-based management efforts. The purpose of the course is to provide program managers and professionals tools that will support their efforts to measure success of programs. While in the past, programs focused on reporting activities, inputs, and outputs, donors are asking for results beyond evidence of program investment. The focus is on higher levels of outcomes.

The purpose of the UN is to bring nations of the world together to work for peace and development. Agency missions include peace and security, climate change, poverty and development, and humanitarian rights. While the mission is honorable, as with all initiatives, resources are limited and competition for resources is great. Donors to UN initiatives want to see the progress being made with mission success.

“This new workshop, launched earlier this year, provides those people dedicated to monitoring, measuring, and evaluating programs tools to help them identify indicators, collect data to measure success with indicators, analyze the data, and report on success in terms stakeholders understand. The context in which these concepts are presented is Results-Based Management. Dr. Jean Serge Quesnel, professor with UNSSC and expert in results-based management and program evaluation is the key in making the concepts relevant to the issues at hand.”

Drs. Quesnel and Phillips along with UNSSC head of learning, Ms. Mariama Daramay-Lewis and project officer, Vincenzo Lionetti, are working together to ensure program managers are given the tools they need to serve the governments whom they support. The hope is that the course will become a standard part of results-based management and program evaluation curricula.

The course was piloted in spring 2009 with a second offering this week, October 26, in Turin, Italy. Plans are underway to take the course to the field in 2010 in locations such as China, Africa, and Morocco.