W O R L D H E A L T H O R G A N I Z A T I O N R E G I O N A L O F F I C E F O R E U R O P E
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Regional Committee for Europe EUR/RC70/8(I)
70th session
Virtual session, 14–15 September 2020 11 August 2020
200582
Provisional agenda item 6 ORIGINAL: ENGLISH
Review of accountability and compliance of the WHO Regional Office for Europe
This document provides an outline of the report to be submitted to the WHO Regional Committee for Europe at its 70th session in September.
This report presents information on the WHO Regional Office for Europe’s commitment to improving accountability and transparency through enhanced compliance, risk management, adherence to ethical principles and internal control frameworks.
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Background
1. The WHO Regional Office for Europe is committed to ensuring accountability,
transparency and adherence to ethical principles across its offices in order to fulfil its mission.
Internal controls in the Regional Office consist of three lines of defence:
• operational management
• provision of advice on control issues
• audit and evaluation functions.
2. Effective enterprise risk management provides reasonable assurances for the
achievement of expected results. This is made possible by assigning accountability in areas of control, by using applications of risk assessment in planning, monitoring and implementation of the programme budget, and by capturing risks through the corporate risk register.
3. The Delegation of Authority from the Director-General of WHO to the Regional
Director for Europe and the Letter of Representation from the Regional Director for Europe to the Director-General of WHO, both publicly available on the WHO website, provide
assurances on the functioning of internal controls within the management responsibilities of the Regional Director.
Ethics
4. The Regional Office has included ethics training in all new staff induction and country office capacity-building workshops. Since 2017, induction workshops for new staff have taken place twice a year. WHO offices in the WHO European Region are 100% compliant with the mandatory training module on the prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse, sexual harassment and other forms of harassment.
5. In 2020, due to the situation with regard to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, induction workshops have started to take place as online sessions, with options such as pre-recorded and virtual sessions being considered to provide flexibility for potential participants.
6. In the European Region, all members of the workforce with both the Financial Delegation of Authority and Procurement Requestor roles are obliged to submit an annual declaration of interests.
7. In 2020, 495 members of the workforce in the Region were asked to submit declarations of interests via a digital tool directly to the Office of Compliance, Risk Management and Ethics at WHO headquarters, whose staff will validate the submissions, review any positive responses and provide feedback directly to staff.
Risk management
8. A risk management training module is being piloted, based on a model applied in the WHO Regional Office for Africa. It will be rolled out in the European Region and will be
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mandatory for all risk register focal points. This is currently delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
9. For the Programme budget 2020–2021, risk management has for the first time been included in the operational planning cycle and is now part of workplan reporting for each budget centre. Following the initial exercise last June, the 2020 Risk Register was
implemented by the local compliance and risk management committees for each country office (where applicable) and divisions of the Regional Office.
10. The review and amendment of the risk register will form part of the business process reengineering that is taking place as part of the transformation in the Regional Office between May and September.
11. High-level risks for the Regional Office were redefined as part of operational planning for the Programme budget 2020–2021. Given the small number of significant risks, and the fact that there were no severe risks, the Executive Management Committee in the Regional Office did not convene a separate regional compliance and risk management committee but performs this function directly.
12. Quarterly sessions focusing on compliance and risk will be held by the Executive Council following completion of the transition process.
Compliance
13. The Regional Office will report on the programme management and administrative reviews conducted in 2020 up to the time of producing the report for the WHO Regional Committee for Europe. The report will focus on best practices and areas for improvement in the operations of the country offices in the Region. This is currently on hold as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
14. In the 2019 annual Internal Control Self-assessment checklist, the budget centres in the Regional Office scored themselves as strong (3.67 out of 4.00), compared with 3.64 for the previous year.
15. For the 2019 validation process following the self-assessments, ratings were vetted against examples of relevant key performance indicators, with feedback provided to budget centres in order to ensure that responses to the checklist were aligned, as far as possible, with key measurements over the last year. All budget centres were further encouraged to include statements of action in which recommended improvements were identified.
16. Management dashboards and key indicators on compliance, performance and risk are being worked on for implementation in 2020, subject to COVID-19 priorities and in collaboration with Business Operations at WHO headquarters. The objectives are to:
• standardize the tools (such as the use of Microsoft Power BI to create a common dashboard);
• standardize corporate dashboards and key performance indicators. Standardization of corporate dashboards is a priority for the Assistant Director-General for
Business Operations, plus all Business Operations unit heads of the respective business areas: Human Resources, Procurement, Finance, Programme and Resource Management etc.; and
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• source new dashboards from one data set stored in a data warehouse maintained by Business Operations at WHO headquarters that is refreshed daily. The data sources are the Global Management System, the Performance Management and Development System, other United Nations agencies, and other ad hoc technical WHO data. The data warehouse contains standardized aggregates or summaries and is thus consistent with GSM transaction data.
Internal accountability and audits
17. A review of the internal and external audits conducted and an update on the
recommendations and progress made in the European Region will be provided in the final report.
18. In Q1 2020, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (IOS) conducted an operational audit to assess the effectiveness of the governance, risk management and control processes of the Division of Administration and Finance (DAF) at the Regional Office. Overall, the audit found that the controls implemented to mitigate the key risks in the Division of
Administration and Finance were satisfactory. A summary of main areas for improvement will be shared with the Regional Committee once finalized.
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