The Regional Service Centre, Entebbe (RSCE) hosted all the Chief Human Resource Officers (CHRO) and Chief Budget and Finance Officers (CBFO) from their client missions at the Regional Training and Conference Centre to a week-long meeting.

For the first time in close to two years, the RSCE organized a face-to-face user group meeting in Entebbe.

The aim of the meeting was to discuss the long-standing Service Level Agreements (SLA) with the client missions to align them to the new Delegation of Authority (DoA) and  the reforms that have been introduced in the UN Secretariat. The meeting also discussed the impact of Covid19 on the SLAs and delved deeply into addressing the required revisions in the SLAs including the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) embedded in the SLA.

The interactive meeting included breakout sessions where different groups discussed amendments to the SLAs and KPIs in Travel, Claims and Education Grant, Finance and Human Resources.

Three Missions representatives were requested to provide their views with regards to the envisaged changes. There were presentations from Mr. Ebow Idun, the CHRO at the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), Happy A. Umwagara, CHRO at the United Nations Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA), and Dereje Bune Abdi, Finance Officer from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan.

Commenting on the meeting and the objectives, Mr. Ebow Idun, CHRO MONUSCO said “Recognizing the evolving work environment, the meeting presented a great opportunity for the CHRO/CBFO’s as well as RSCE colleagues to collaboratively review the existing arrangements and agree on how best to improve service delivery to our clients. The exchange of ideas has helped to deepen our collective knowledge and can only serve to ensure that our clients experience is enriched.”

Meeting participants were also impressed with the reporting system from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS). UNMISS featured their in-house developed analytical tool that helps them track and identify bottlenecks in delivering their KPIs. The end-to-end data capturing tool utilizes data from Power BI and displays it in a more user-friendly manner for Managers to interpret.

In her presentation, Elizabeth Gregory from UNMISS Business Analytics and Compliance Section, demonstrated how the tool could be used to track administrative transactions and staff actions, and the reports inform management decision within the Mission. In building on the Secretary General data strategy, the forum wanted to share best practices assisting other Entities to embark on the data analytics journey.

Paulin Djomo, the Director a.i. RSCE pointed out the importance of reliable data and tracking of the KPI’s on the mission level, advising the meeting that UNMISS and RSCE could assist its Client Missions in building data analytics capacity using existing and/or additional resources. The tool is an aid to help further enhance service delivery.

In closing the conference, several recommendations were made which will be actioned in the next few months improving Missions performance and the client’s journey.

The meeting took place between 7^th and 11^th February 2022