Strengthening National Policy Planning and Management Capacity (SNPPMC) is the follow up of National State Governance Project (NSGP) with a distinct focus on improving policy planning, implementation, and decision making mechanism at the central government level. The project commenced on 1st July 2014 and coincided with the power transition and structural changes by the new government. In view of changes in the project’s counterparts structure (Chief of Staff Office (CoSo) merged with the Office of the Administrative Affairs), the Project Board has decided a revision of project document and has assigned a task force to review the scope and focus of the project and submit a revised draft to the Project Board for endorsement. 

Political uncertainty, stemmed from election crisis, and absence of the project management team, as the two most important challenges, have hampered the project implementation. However, the project has been able to deliver on some of the activities as followings: 
 

SIGOB/TRANSDOC (Digital Correspondence Management System) implementation continued at the Office of Administrative Affairs (OAA). The application translated in Dari and adjusted to OAA’s working flows. In addition to installation of the application, 4 staff at OAA M&E department were coached/trained on how to use TRANADOC system. The implementation slowed down after merger of CoSo and OAA and when new officials were appointed by the president. 
 

During the reporting period, several consultation meetings were conducted both at the senior management and technical level to discuss new priorities and needs of newly established Administrative Office of The President (AoP) and Vice President Offices. Strengthening policy making cycle, Automation of business processes, improvement of ICT infrastructure, support to public communication and capacity development are amongst the pressing needs and priorities expressed by new officials. The project document revision taskforce will take note of all the needs during the revision process. 

In terms of Project management, SNPPMC project team was not fully established due to political uncertainty and recruitment challenges. The recruitment of technical Specialist (policy & planning) was finalized. The selected candidate will be on board on early or mid-February 2015. In addition, recruitment of Admin/finance was finalized but the selected candidate refused to join the project, thus the position was advertised. The overall project delivery rate is 87%