United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS)

Overview

MOPAN released its most recent assessment of UNOPS in 2021.

UNOPS is unique in the UN system in many ways, in particular through its non-programmatic, self-financed business model and its mandate to be a central resource in the UN system for procurement and infrastructure, including for relevant capacity development activities. As a service provider, UNOPS implements projects on behalf of others, supporting partners’ efforts and goals.

Focusing on the value it provides to partners, UNOPS articulates its ‘value proposition’ through three contribution goals and four management goals. UNOPS has developed strong metrics and business intelligence to monitor demand for delivery of its services.

UNOPS’ business model is demand driven and firmly project-based and not linked to a programmatic mandate. This enables UNOPS to work with a variety of partners in many sectors and countries, including in some of the world’s most challenging contexts.

Working for a fee, UNOPS does not receive any assessed or voluntary contributions. Because of its demand driven and self-financing business model, UNOPS, more than any other UN agency, needs to prove its value and effectiveness and demonstrate its comparative and collaborative advantages, which it does based on detailed analysis of context, partner agencies and alternative providers of services.

Performance rating summary

UNOPS organisational performance wheel — Organisational performance

Key findings

UNOPS is defined by a culture of innovation and a solutions-focused approach, providing a solid foundation for further growth, consistent with its strategic direction.
Managing and mitigating risk is fundamental for UNOPS. To manage such risks, UNOPS has built robust enterprise risk management and internal control frameworks, aligned to an overarching governance, risk, and compliance framework.
UNOPS is not constrained by a programmatic mandate, nor by earmarked funding. It thus has the possibility to engage where it has strong comparative or collaborative advantage.
The demand driven organisational structure and operating model gives UNOPS agility, flexibility and responsiveness. UNOPS is able to rapidly resize and reorient organisational structures including its geographical footprint. This was evident, for example, in the efforts and initiatives that UNOPS has undertaken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Decentralised decision-making and the application of systematic management practices and recognised international standards have contributed to UNOPS’ reputation for excellence in project implementation. This is an area of permanent focus and one of the pillars for its growth ambitions, together with the continuous adaptation of the type and scope of services provided.

A fundamental aspect of business excellence (the EFQM model) is continuous learning and improvement, and the integration of feedback loops and sharing of lessons learnt is a welcome area where UNOPS has announced its intention to intensify efforts.
Development results in UNOPS are formally reported in output terms. UNOPS has announced an intention to better track “direct and indirect contributions”, and a better consistency in the usage of definitions between UNOPS results terminology and that applied by peers and partners would help clarify the nature and scope of these contributions.
Given its commitment to UN values and global commitments such as SDGs, reporting on and integrating concerns related to gender mainstreaming, environment, and human rights is emerging as an area for improvement.
Whilst UNOPS knowledge management system is maturing and improving, two issues are signalled for further consideration: i) the balance between attention to systems for sharing of lessons from implementation versus systems for data analytics by demand, especially given the ambition to evolve the service lines and solutions offered which need to be informed by lessons learnt, and ii) introducing a certain degree of post project assessment work on the contribution of the outputs to the partner’s broader objectives would strengthen the credibility of the self-reported results and by implication the accountability to stakeholders.