Strategic Planning & Evaluation

Strategic Planning & Evaluation, SPE, brings together Senior Advisors with a range of competencies and long experience in the Organization, reporting directly to the Director of the International Relations Sector.

The overall objective of SPE is to support the entire Sector in ensuring strategic direction and implementing consistent evaluation to assess impact of activities, drawing on the specific skills and background of the Senior Advisors. 

To this end, SPE functions as an informal, in-house think tank and policy support entity, providing analysis on issues of concern to the Sector, suggesting courses of action and implementing specific, strategic projects that together foster transversal and innovative action across work streams. 

The Senior Advisers take the lead on special initiatives, policy coordination and articulation, as well as broader planning in support of the Sector, promoting internal best practices concerning strategic planning and evaluation.   

Specific tasks include, among others:

Strategic policy support for the Sector

  • Contributing to the compilation of strategic documents, such as work plans, budget planning and presentations to the CERN Council and other key bodies;
  • Providing conceptual and strategic analysis, advice, recommendations, general guidance or alternative courses of action on challenges before the Sector with a view to ensuring coherence and a long-term view in priority-setting;
  • Leading or supporting Sector-wide research, lessons learned or best practices projects that help to shape long-term priority-setting;
  • Providing support to senior managers across the Sector in designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation tools for assessing programme achievements and programme effectiveness, feeding this experience into priority-setting processes. 

Strategic Organization-wide policy support

  • Designing and leading individual flagship projects that cut across CERN Sectors and work areas, such as the new Alumni Programme and others, as needed;
  • Providing strategic guidance on communications and corporate messaging;
  • Providing executive speech writing support to the Director-General and the Directorate;
  • Leading, or representing the Sector in, Organization-wide task forces on issues of a cross-cutting nature and with policy implications related to the work of the Sector.

External interface in support of overall organizational goals

  • Representing the Sector and/or the Organization in external projects, networks, task forces or other contexts, ensuring that the Sector/Organization is connected to initiatives, policy development or key strategic activities that further overall organizational goals;
  • Participating in or contributing to policy debates, networks or other activities that can feed into strategic policy development within the Organization.