Capacity Assessment Manual for National Human Rights Institutions • As one respondent noted, the value of the CA is that it seeks to capture internal processes and functioning as well as the externally oriented activities and outputs of the NHRI and thus helps better understand the link between the two. • Enabling more effective and evidence-based strategic planning, especially when the CA has been timed right, by highlighting institutional strengths and challenges and enabling a discussion of possible ways and means to build or address them. • The CA report also provided (a) a baseline and yardstick to assess organisational development through its generation of data and information from across the organisation, and (b) a basis for designing possible trajectories of organisational development not only through its recommendations but also the debate and discussion generated by the process and the report. • It brought to the fore the extent of divergence and convergence in the perceptions of capacities and functioning between different levels/parts of the institution especially between Commissioners and staff, Senior Management and staff, headquarters and field offices, etc. • The CA has triggered a focus on leadership and management and precipitated review of decision making processes, changes in management structure and methods, and revisiting the configuration of relationships between headquarters and field offices and relationships between different departments; • CA has been followed by a new focus on training programmes, in-house and external. This includes training focussed on individuals as well as the broader institution and has included areas as diverse as strategic planning, public enquiries, language, scholarships for professional advancement, etc. • The development of new, or review of existing, standard operating procedures, manuals or guidelines covering areas like complaints handling, investigations and reporting, case management, also appears to have been given an impetus by the CA process. • The CA has also tended to result in planning changes in human resources policies, including revisiting and clarifying roles and responsibilities of Commissioners and staff; staff development; and, measures aimed at grievance redressal, for example. FINAL REPORT Independent Review of the Capacity Assessment of National Human Rights Institutions in the Asia Pacific Region November 2012, p 6, 8-9 The review report recommended many adaptations to the CA process, including: • composing the CA discussion groups to reflect better the differences among the staff, according to function, level, gender and other status • shortening and simplifying the CA questionnaire to focus only on those institutional issues that are most widely shared • better formulation of the core capacity issues covered in the questionnaire to make them simpler and clearer • better and more easily understandable presentation of the quantitative data from the questionnaire • electronic administration of the questionnaire, for example, using an online survey site • shortening the CA report and focusing it more tightly on the proposed strategies and actions Chapter 2: The capacity assessment approach for national human rights institutions | 13