Secretary-General's Office

The Secretary-General is responsible for the management and governance of the Commonwealth Secretariat; leads the organisation in developing, delivering, and being accountable for the Secretariat’s strategic plan; has a specific mandate to protect and promote the Commonwealth’s core values through the use of ‘good offices’; and leads the Secretariat’s ‘outreach’, primarily through contacts at senior levels in Commonwealth member countries and with civil society leaders as well as through the media and public engagements.

The Secretary-General is supported in these responsibilities and accountabilities by two Deputy Secretaries-General and an Assistant Secretary-General. These four senior managers collectively comprise the Management Committee and individually have supervisory responsibility for all divisions and other business units in the Secretariat.

The Secretary-General’s Office (SGO) supports this senior management group to exercise its functions by:

• providing professional and administrative support;
• providing an oversight function to assure the quality of expenditure on CFTC activities;
• coordinating cohesive Secretariat-wide inputs and outputs to the work of the Secretary-General and the Deputy-Secretaries-General; and
• providing a source of supplementary policy advice.

The work of the SGO, therefore, is determined by the Strategic Plan but cuts across programmes undertaken by the Secretariat’s operational divisions in pursuit of the plan’s outcomes. By its nature, the SGO’s work also tends to be ongoing rather than time-bound or project-oriented, and can often need to be reactive to unexpected events.

The Project Management and Referrals Unit of the SGO has prime responsibility for the quality assurance analyses of projects and contracts so as to ensure that they meet with the design standards of the Secretariat and comply with the results-based management approach adopted by the Secretariat.