How can NPMs develop an operational plan on the basis of their strategy?

Once an NPM has developed its strategic plan, the next step is to put it into practice. This is done through an operational plan. Each element of the operational plan should be aimed at helping the NPM to achieve a specific objective of the strategic plan. Operational plans are thus often internal documents to the institution, and their main audience are NPM team members.

To develop an operational plan, NPMs may start first breaking down their strategic plan into one-year (or shorter) objectives. Then they may think about the different activities or interventions that will help them to achieve these objectives.  These might be visits to places of detention, dialogue with the authorities, training and capacity building, educational activities, legal and policy advice, or other things.

It is important to keep in mind that the operational plan should be simple and easy to understand. The more complicated they are, the less likely it is that the NPM team will understand and follow them. This might mean choosing a number of key activities (according to their capacities) that will help the NPM to reach its objectives that year. As with the strategic plan, each of these activities will ideally be accompanied by some milestones or intermediate steps that will help NPMs to know whether the institution is on track to achieving them.