The Regional Office, as part of its mandate, is expected to undertake periodic missions to review and support the country offices. These missions should be planned keeping in mind several factors including:

• Specific request from an FAOR
• Date of arrival of FAOR at duty station, with priority given to visits to countries served by newly appointed FAORs
• Length of period without a substantive FAOR
• Issues raised in Inception, Annual and Terminal Reports
• Issues raised by audit/evaluation missions
• Date of previous support mission
• Issues raised by other offices (e.g. Finance, Procurement, Legal, etc)
• Overall feedback on the situation in the Representation including working relations among staff

It is considered that, ideally, a country office should be visited by the responsible officer (or by an internal Auditor) every two or three years.

The following documents may be useful in planning missions to country offices.

• A template message from the RO to the FAOR announcing the mission
• The standard Terms of Reference
• Checklist of key topics to be covered during the mission
• Sample Back to Office Report (BTOR)
  

BTORs for any mission undertaken by the Regional Office to an FAO Representation should be copied to OSD.