What’s new: POPP Headlines
The new POPP
Headlines webpage, accessible through UNDP Intranet, provides news and updates on our programme
and operations policies and procedures. Managers and staff members across the Organization are invited to bookmark this page,
and visit it regularly to keep up with the latest information on the ‘how to’ aspects of our work. Each new entry has a space
in which staff members can share comments and feedback, as well as to initiate discussion on issues of interest. Issues that
prompt a healthy exchange of views may be taken to the MPN or other means of dialogue and decision-making.
How
to Use the POPP:
The POPP replaces all former and existing Programming, Financial, and Procurement
Manuals. The Human Resources Manual will be retired once all remaining human resources content revised
in accordance with contractual reform provisions is migrated to the platform. In addition, new
chapters on administration and security management will be added in 2009, at which time, all related manuals also will be
retired. With the incorporation of all remaining prescriptive content to the web-based platform during 2009-2010, the POPP
will become the sole authoritative source of prescriptive guidance to managers and staff members on programming
and operational requirements.
The policies and procedures are consistent with the organization’s enterprise resource
management (Atlas) business processes and aims for easy navigation. The chapters are displayed in the navigation menu on
the left side of the screen. Once one enters a chapter, all the business processes are listed. Clicking on the business
process will take the user to the related sub-processes (illustrating in detail how to perform a task). In addition, a flow
chart of the process or sub-process is provided, along with relevant policies, templates and forms, user-friendly tools, tips
and techniques and lessons & knowledge from experience. Each sub-process also provides the document properties, i.e. information
about the document itself, such as history of approved regulations, including issue date and effective date, rules and policies,
as well as related Executive Board decisions.
Managers and staff members should always refer to the document
properties to ensure application of the latest version of the policies and procedures. Prescriptive content is regularly
up-dated (there are quarterly publishing cycles) as all content is required to undergo a mandatory revision every 12 months.
Prior to publication, all content is reviewed by practitioners in the field (through consultation on the Management Practice
Network), the content authority (Bureau Directors or unit heads), and the Prescriptive Content Management Board
(comprised of all content authorities and chaired by the Director of the Operations Support Group at the Executive Office),
which ensures policy coherence and integration of cross-cutting issues. The Prescriptive Content Management Board is comprised
of Bureau Directors or unit heads who are the final authority on prescriptive content in their substantive areas that reflect
the programme and operations policies approved by the Operations Group.
From the left side navigation
staff can access site map and glossary.
The POPP is an indispensable tool for your everyday
UNDP work and should help you to work better and more effectively to achieve development results.
On the Drawing
Board
Each sub-process also features an “On the Drawing Board” section, describing new policies or initiatives that are
underway that will impact guidance to staff in the exercise of their programming and operation functions.
Feedback Button
The POPP is also a communication tool. By clicking on the feedback button, users
will be able to provide comments and feedback on the policies and procedures that will serve as input for improving its content
and user friendliness. The web-based nature of the policies and procedures allows for easy and timely updates or modifications,
and together with the document history, ensures that all UNDP staff members are applying current guidance in the exercise
of their functions.
What’s next for POPP?
The ‘big push’ on the POPP in 2008 brought its content and features under close scrutiny across a broad cross-section
of staff members. It is clear that UNDP must now dramatically improve the coherence of its prescriptive content as well as
its utility to end users. To this end, ‘POPP 2.0’will be
developed based on the following core principles:
· Results and
accountability. Since it is expected that UNDP manages for development
results, this should become an underlying feature of all sections of the POPP, rather than a separate category. The same applies
for accountability, which is taken to be a defining principle framing practice across the organization
· Accessibility and customization. The
POPP should become a platform that allows access to content through a search engine and formats that can be downloaded in
pdf format. With greater clarity of function soon to be established through the Organizational Guide and with further refinement
of functional job descriptions, it should be possible to organize POPP content, at the very least, by functional level. The
POPP should then be customizable, as a minimum, based on role (as a deputy country director, a programme analyst, a finance
associate, etc.)
· Simplification. The tendency to add while not taking away is pervasive. The development of POPP 2.0 will be guided by an urgent
need to reduce burden. The POPP 2.0 initiative will have, built into it, a commitment to review prescription in order to reduce
redundancies and otherwise to simplify existing resources for the benefit of users.
