UNSIA Newsletter Issue 1, December 1997
Miscellaneous
Steering Committee (Box)
The UN’s Administrative Committee on Coordination Steering Committee on the SIA, co-chaired by the ECA Executive Secretary and the UNDP Administrator, bolsters and monitors the implementation of SIA projects.
The joint ECA/UNDP secretariat carries out the day-to-day functions of the Steering Committee, facilitating interaction among partner agencies through workshops and technical meetings, and encouraging the sharing of information through newsletters and publications, and sustaining political support for SIA through communication and outreach programmes.
Focus on SIA value-added
The concept of value added at the coun-try level was presented as the framework for the discussions at the March 1997 SIA Technical Working Group meeting held at the UN Conference Centre in Addis. Convened as a preparatory meeting for the ACC Steering Committee meeting in April, the gathering provided a forum to participants to enhance the quality and depth of the lead agency collaborative arrangements under the Special Initiative.
"The workshop provided the Secretariat an opportunity to facilitate consensus-building among partner agencies on the practical logistical issues of implementation under the Initiative, a key to the Initiative’s long-term success," noted Mr. K.Y. Amoako Chairman of the Working Group meeting noted.
Participants reached consensus on a country typology for SIPs readiness, underscored that the success of the Initiative rested on achieving value-added at the country level; and stressed the importance of the UN Country Team in fostering value-added through the SIA.
SIA PRIME Database
The Secretariat will rely heavily on feed-back from SIA partner agencies to keep this Web-site as informative and as useful as possible. To facilitate this, and also support the Secretariat’s SIA monitoring function, an SIA Programme Implementation, Monitoring, and Evaluation (PRIME) Database, providing for electronic storage, reporting, and data exchange among SIA partner agencies, has been designed. All SIA partner agencies will be receiving shortly a letter from the Secretariat on the PRIME Database, describing its content and design and inviting their input.