Secretary-General's Office

The Secretary-General manages and governs the Commonwealth Secretariat and:

• 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’;
• leads the Secretariat’s ‘outreach’ - through senior contacts in member countries, with civil society leaders and 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 is determined by the Strategic Plan but spans across programmes undertaken by the Secretariat’s operational divisions in pursuit of the plan's outcomes. The SGO’s work tends to be ongoing and often needs to react to unexpected events.

The Project Management and Referrals Unit of the SGO has prime responsibility for the quality assurance to ensure compliance with the Secretariat's design standards and results-based management approach.