DETAILED ASSESSMENT OF UNRWA PERFORMANCE. 27 fields of operations may be over-qualified for their positions. The limited opportunity for developing leadership skills within the field is a constraint. UNRWA’s decentralised structure, with two headquarters offices and five field offices, supports service delivery but with some tensions. UNRWA has instituted measures to support decentralised decision-making and to take account of differentiated needs while also seeking to retain flexibility going forward. Within the service areas (particularly education and health), the Amman headquarters staff play a well-developed role in shaping and supporting the delivery of a decentralised approach. This includes bringing Agency-wide standards to the field and a sense of shared ownership of the programmes among headquarters and the field. The decentralised approach allows and encourages innovation, which is UNRWA’s natural instinct, within and beyond the fields of operations. There is clarity on delegated authority and a clear organisational intent to sustain it. Finding the right balance of headquarters and field authority under financial crisis conditions remains a source of tension. In general, the more mature the service area (e.g. education, health), the less tension is experienced. UNRWA lives with perennial questions, from within and from outside the organisation, about whether and how effectively the Agency organises and delivers to reach the most vulnerable within its refugee population. It has proved challenging for UNRWA to target the most vulnerable, given the politically sensitive context of the host governments and the Agency’s limited budget envelope. Effective targeting requires both the political operating space (in relation to the host government or authority) and the resources to set up and sustain systems. UNRWA has found it difficult to overcome resistance among beneficiaries and some staff who identify with the community. UNRWA is working to professionalise its resource mobilisation in a challenging environment. Resource mobilisation is a top priority across the organisation including at the highest levels, where staff are pulling out all stops to address the funding crisis. Despite the success of resource mobilisation efforts, UNRWA is limited in what it can mobilise given its past underinvestment in communications and marketing and the competitive market conditions. Where UNRWA is able to mobilise funds, it often faces the dilemma of being required to “projectise” elements of the programme budget for specific initiatives. That said, resource mobilisation (e.g. emergency appeals and for the programme budget and externally funded projects) is managed in a way that generally maintains a programmatic orientation to UNRWA’s work. However, chasing financial resources, particularly in the more accessible project form, and keeping tight control on costs cut into the time available for active programme management. UNRWA’s success in diversifying its funding base is improving. In 2017, 86.68% of the contributions to the programme budget came from traditional donors. UNRWA is in the process of exploring the development of a Trust Fund with the World Bank and an Islamic Endowment Fund, or Waqf, with the Islamic Development Bank, as alternative funding streams to provide the Agency with further and flexible funding. However, the evaluation of the Resource Mobilisation Strategy highlights UNRWA’s overall challenge in mobilising resources and suggests that, even with the best strategy, the Agency will struggle to significantly and durably improve its mobilisation of much-needed resources. UNRWA’s staff performance management system is clearly set out but is not always implemented in practice. The system’s three-point scale is not considered sufficiently nuanced. Strategic management of human resources is being faced with a difficult environment where laying off staff seems to easily heighten anxiety among staff. Increasing quality requirements at a time of constrained resources also create challenges to decentralised staff performance management and the needs of strategic HR management. Strategic HR management is also constrained by budget shortfalls, underfunding and unpredictability of funding month to month or year to year. The MTS 2016-21 outlines performance compacts between each director and the Commissioner-General that address the extent to which a director has taken necessary action recommended in audits, evaluations and inspections. These were introduced in 2016.