By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 23 -- The UN's much-delayed Enterprise Resource Planning systems upgrade "UMOJA" has been plagued by nepotism and the hiring of friends from its inception.
In 2010 Inner City Press exclusively exposed how Paul van Essche came in as head of the ERP at the D-2 level and immediately moved to bring in colleagues and friends from Geneva like Jon Solem, doctoring their Personal History Profiles to do so. Click here for that.
Now, ostensibly to solve the problem, Ernesto Baca has been brought in, previously of the World Food Program and before that Telecom Argentina.
Strikingly, this is the same trajectory as Ban Ki-moon's current chief of staff Susana Malcorra. Perhaps those she is bringing in, like Mr. Graisse at the Department of General Assembly and Conference Management, are competent.
But what about the process? Weeks ago Inner City Press wrote and asked the UN if Ms. Malcorra recused herself from the process that brought in Graisse, so far without answer. How about Mr. Baca?
Today's system is more and more shot through with these corporate conflicts of interest. At the UN Joint Staff Pension Fund, we find that former PriceWaterhouseCoopers consultant is now Chief Financial Officer at Pension Fund. What are the restrictions on such hiring from consultants?
Meanwhile there a hole in the Pension Fund, which defenders call merely "actuarial." But the hole is big; now, retirement age is to be raised to 65 in 2014. How is accountable for under-performing the market? Who is accountable at the UN?
In the interim, Inner City Press has obtained and is putting online the Board of Auditors report on UMOJA, here, including under-estimate of cost and lack of transparency.
A well placed source exclusive tells Inner City Press of UMOJA, "there was no software because the UN could not sign a contract with SAP. Later, the scope was drastically reduced. Bottom line is that the staffing table is bloated with D1 and P5s. Including posts seconded from other offices, there are 11 D1s and over 15 P5s for a staffing table of less than 100 people."
The UMOJA web site has a list of "Official Documents" -- but this audit is not among them. So here it is, for transparency. Watch this site.
