National Action Plans require a consistently understood and communicated vision statement. A clearly articulated vision facilitates a coordinated, whole-of-government approach to effective implementation. In fact, the NAP’s vision should be the primary driving force for designing the plan: its outcomes, activities, indicators, and measures of impact should all be directly anchored to its vision.

Without a clear vision, implementing agencies may take the NAP in different directions as agencies impose their internal institutional priorities and cultures on NAP implementation. The imposition of internal institutional priorities may lead to inconsistent, uneven, or contradictory implementation. To ensure a consistent understanding of the vision and promote better alignment with an implementation plan, some countries like the Netherlands, UK and Canada have adopted a Theory of Change approach - a one-page ‘map’ which outlines how change is to be achieved – to underpin their NAPs