Project Report

Final Project Report United Nations Institute for Research and Training (UNITAR) Hiroshima Fellowship for Afghanistan 2007 Cycle Group VI Prof. Suzuki Dr. Nader Feroz K. Hematyar Shah Maqsood Amiri Mary Akrami Murtaza Delliry Habib Ahmadzai October 2007 Acknowledgement We would like to thank the UNITAR fellowship program for Afghanistan and the people of Hiroshima for financing and providing such valuable and productive training program. The staffs from UNITAR were really kind, helpful and active all the time. We would like to thank and appreciate Ms. Nasreen Azimi, the Director of UNITAR/HOAP for her continues and never-ending support to this fellowship program. Our deepest thanks and appreciation goes to Sharapiya, Humaira, Maxym, Kaori and all others were as usual very supportive and helpful. Our sincere gratitude to Professor Suzuki for his constructive and productive inputs and comments; and at last but not least our appreciation to our coach Dr. Mohammad Nader who's help and guidance provided us the way forward. Table of contents Executive Summary.......................................................................................................4 Background....................................................................................................................5 Objective.......................................................................................................................6 Outcomes .......................................................................................................................6 Methodology..................................................................................................................7 Implementation ..............................................................................................................8 Conclusion .....................................................................................................................9 Implications...................................................................................................................9 Executive Summary Each year, around 25 participants (‘Fellows’) are selected by UNITAR to partake in the Fellowship cycle. Participants are selected based on specific criteria established by UNITAR and its partners, such as their professional background, motivation, and ‘human resource development role’ in specific areas of professional responsibility within the government or in civil society. Group VI, also named Administrative and Finance, is a group of five fellows from different government and non-government entities in Afghanistan. Our group project "Report Writing at the Organizational Level" is a capacity building training program aimed at developing the capacity of individuals in reporting and communications. The goal of the project is: "To increase the capacity of relevant staffs in reporting and communicating activities of their relevant departments in a useful way". The aim of this training is to elaborate the importance of general report writing within the organization. Currently, most of the organizations are failing and loosing credibility while reporting to donors or other stakeholders. This training program will demonstrate the different reports that may be required in an organization. The project focus will be on developing and conducting report writing training for senior and mid level managers, supervisors and assistants/officers. This training program will enable the staff to follow the appropriate procedure of reporting and communicating to donors, implementing agencies, ministries, municipalities and independent sectors of the government as well as inter-organizational report writing. The approach in achieving the goal of the project would be to conduct training in report writing for the employees and staffs of selected government and nongoverrnmen organization. Group members went through a need assessment cycle where different needs assessment methods were used in order to find out the areas in an organization where the capacity of staff is low. Keeping in view the importance of reporting and the lack of capacity in this area, our group decided to conduct a capacity building program in report writing for about 35 to 40 employees of each group member's organization. This training program on "Report Writing at Organization Level" tries to build the capacity of trainees to the required level of knowledge and experience where they can report in a proper manner and achieve the objectives of the organization. Throughout the Fellowship Cycle the group had received guidance on how to improve their performance from their mentors, moderators and other supportive staff from Hiroshima. Background Reports communicate information which has been compiled as a result of research and analysis of data and issues. In management sense it can be said, in order to insure the counterparts about the outcomes and achievements of the department or organization as a whole, there is a need to present a concrete and concise report based on the previous planning of the organization and project objectives. In countries like Afghanistan, there is a strong need for all government and nongoverrnmen entities to communicate their activity and achievements. Organizations often get acknowledgment when they report their activity and achievements in a proper manner. Unfortunately in most cases, the activities and achievements by these entities go unreported. Some of the examples from group members’ personal experiences of how bad reporting system can affect organization’s outcomes can be seen below. Recently H.E Deputy Minister of Finance at a press conference acknowledged this problem and expressed disappointment over lack of a proper work report from some ministries. H. E. Deputy Minister of Finance went on to add up that due to this problem, some donor agencies have decreased their funding for some ministries and government organizations. In Ministry of Communications and IT, a director was not aware of the work progress on a project. When the Minister asked the director about the project, the director did not have any report or update on the project. After this incident, the minister rendered instruction to all the 14 Director Generals of the Ministry to report their regular weekly work report every Wednesday. Also recently, a manager from Ministry of Commerce had traveled with a group of managers from Ministry of Communications and IT to Dubai for a training program. Employees, who travel abroad for any official activity, should report back to the Minister upon their arrival about purpose of the trip, its achievements and their findings. Unfortunately, that manager from the Ministry of Commerce could not report and was given an official warning letter. Similar to this, there was another case of three senior level managers within the Independent Administrative Reform & Civil Service Commission (IARCSC) nominated to a training program held in India. The team was supposed to conduct the leadership program and come back with a positive achievement by reporting and arranging similar workshop here to other senior level manager based on their achievements. However, the level of their understanding and knowledge was too low to embed the acquired training for others. The reason was lack of report writing and understanding of the subject. Chairman of the commission, issued a warning letter to the training and development department of the commission in order not to send such people abroad because not only they defame the organization but also represent the system of the country corrupted and fraudulent. The reason is often lack of proper capacity and education in report writing while in other cases it is the inability of most of the employees to write a report. This problem is a fact that is faced by all government and non-government organizations. Having good knowledge and skills of report writing will make it easy to achieve the goals and objectives within the fixed period of time. Goal: To increase the capacity of relevant staffs in reporting and communicating activities of their relevant departments in a useful and practical way Objective To increase the capacity of relevant staffs, in reporting and communicating activities of their relevant departments in a useful and practical way. Building Capacity of organization/employees in reporting, communications Ability to clearly present the outcomes Satisfy donors and other stakeholders of the organization’s outcomes Outcomes Our team project "Report Writing" is not just a training program. It is a human resource capacity development training toolkit and the process of equipping individuals with the understanding, skills and knowledge and training abilities that enables them to report their activity more effectively and concise understandable. It is also an ongoing capacity building program, where trainees will pass the knowledge and skills to other employees. In real term we can say, it is a two steps training program, teach and learn process. We believe this capacity building program will have the following expected outputs: • Equipped individuals and the organization with required knowledge and skill that would be able to report in a more effective and efficient ways then they were doing prior • Will help individuals and the organization in decision making process • Individuals can initiate changes by presenting a clear and concise report to the superiors (Senior managers, stakeholders, International agencies or counterparts) • Individuals and the organizations get more attention when activities reported • And it will improve the performance of individuals and the organization Methodology In general, Group VI developed a work plan at the beginning of the fellowship in order to track down flow of activities or new developed points of the project. The work plan was made to have weekly working group sessions among all the team members in order to share new points or data gathered from each of our respective organization. For the selection of Report writing as our team project, the following approach was taken: Started with individual need assessment Analyzed each assessment Prepared a priority list from each individual assessment Came up with Report Writing as the team project, based on the priority list Started work on developing a draft concept paper Shared the concept paper with group members, coach, and mentor Received comments and feedback Finalized the project Based on the team composition, we have used different methods of data gathering for the project. Although each team member faced difficulties and constraint against the team responsibility, we never lost hope and strengths. Group started the data gathering by doing the individual needs assessment within each of group member’s respective organization in order to find out the constraint, weaknesses, strengths and findings. By doing the assessment, we have assessed each analysis in order to find out what is needed utmost by preparing a priority individual needs assessment list. The final individual assessment modified that each of the respective organization lacking of productive and transparent reporting. Later, the group raised the concept with group coach the urgency of report writing. Finally, the entire group came to an ending to start working on development of a draft concept paper for report writing. The concept paper shared with the coach and other group members for any comments and suggestions. After seeking and incorporating comments and suggestions of each team member including the coach, the group finalized the project in order to keep the readers aware of what the entire team has been done through specific approach used for compilation of the final project. Implementation Each of the group memeber developed an individual training need assessment document. As a result, they proposed certain recommendations and conclusions regarding their joint need assessment. The need assessment shows that there is a continuous change in workplaces due to effective reporting. This change either is following of succesful organizational change or it is the consequence of changes in the local circumstances at the offices in center or sub-national level. Thus, to respond to change Group VI members should adapt appropriately. In this new era of postconflict reconstruction, the classic reporitng structure is not delivering the actual outcomes to the senior officers, stakeholders or other international partners of the project or organization. So there is a visible conflict between the context and the existing system. The system can be improved only if the people who are working in the system are trained. As one of the team member Feroz K. Hematyar mentioned in a group discussion that "The replacement of new administrative system on reporting issues based on personnel competency and effective reporting over the old bureaucratic system is mandatory." While another member of the group stated, " Directors’ capacity building on leadership, management, English language and computer programs [must be improved]" for presenting a concrete and effective report to the partners of the organization. In real terms, the member is indirectly trying to say that the new directors need to know the overal system of the organization in terms of reporting. The need for report writing is well reflected in another member's recommendations that an effective report can not only bring success to the organization but also avails plenty of opportunities of funding resources for the organizaiton's upcoming projects or easily we can say, " the partners or stakeholders of the organization will relay on its achievements and provide more opportunities (projects)''. Consequently to be inline with these continued changes we have to get new knowledge and new trainings. The fellows’ proposed training reflects the principle of "causing external change by proving internal change". Sometimes a good leader or manager can assess the workplace and revise the structure as she/he deems necessary to provide training for the expected changes. If this internal change succeeds then it could be replicated and will be able to bring external change. All of fellows wish to bring back to back to their respected offices proposed certain training solution: Feroz writes: " Public Administration in Afghanistan is still based on the old system of beurocracy and poor report writing." With this he had found the problem and suggested that effective and concise reporting skills can change the scope of activiteis and as a result it would improve the efficiency and performance so that the partners or stakeholders of the organization trust into it. As mentioned above, the project will focus on developing a concrete, effective and prospective reporting system within the group members’ organizations. Later, Group VI, distributed each role among themselves to collect relevent information for developing the project proposal for funding. Each of the team member played their role very effectively and actively by collecting relevent information to complete the project and speak out to one ending point. During collecting of experience, each team member faced plenty of difficulties and problems like shortage of time, lack of coordination and cooperation from their respective ministries or organizations, sometimes absentese of the team members in regular group meetings made it very difficult to dissaminate the same information and incorporate for the project. Neverthless, the spirit of each team member was high and promissing, we never lost hope, instead we challenged the time and every weak indicators to reach the setup goal of completing the project by collecting the relvent or targeted informaiton tha the project is in need. Conclusion As mentioned in the above that lack of proper and productive reporting brought the organizations and agencies into a very difficult situation which means donors are not interested or have trust on the implementers to extend the support due to unproper data flows and unproductive reporting. We have seen many cases like this, for instance, Civil Service Commission is one of the strongest coordination body implementing reform within the country. The Commission has lost its utmostof trust among donors due to its fake data flows and lack of unproductive reporting. People who are working at the senior level expect better and useful data from junior employees but lacking the manpower and skills of reporting, junior employees or assistants are unable to provide the exact data to show what has happened during the course of detained time. Based on each team member’s need assessment, we are sure to train the number of employees for improving their knowledge of reporting in order to satisfy the clients of each organization via its productive work. Implications Currently, each organization in the country faces plenty of difficulties in satisfying the donor community. It is due to fake data flows and uncertainty of reporting. The reporters are unable to provide what is necessary as best outcomes or positive results for the organization. The implication of this training will not only able the reporters or other member of the organization to understand the importance of reporting but also enable them to present effective, transparent and useful report in order to satisfy not only readers, stakeholders, donors but also their respective line managers or supervisors for their further promotions.