At UN, Transparency Debated in Secret, Labor Discussed in the Basement, Arnault in DPKO Mix

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
www.innercitypress.com/un2mgmtreform041008.html

UNITED NATIONS, April 10 -- At the UN these days, there is talk of accountability and reform. A closed-door meeting was held on the topic on Wednesday; the press was not allowed t hear what UN management said to member states or vice versa.

A glimpse was to be had Thursday in the basement, when Under Secretary General for Management Alicia Barcena took the podium to speak to the UN Staff Council, and to take their questions. She acknowledged that the Compact that she signed with Ban Ki-moon, uploaded to the UN's internal website under the heading Accountability, blurred to May 1 a March 1 deadline set by the General Assembly.

She noted the Staff Union's critique of the appointment of the UN's new Ombudsman. She implored not only the Union, however, but also Inner City Press to help her with reforms. "I don't always like what you write," she told the Press, "but you help raise the visibility." So here goes.

The Staff Council says Management wants only to consult, not negotiate, that as in the case of the tour guides, it responds only to negative media coverage and, in that case, a sick-out by the guides. A member asked if the Union will be allowed to make a presentation directly to the General Assembly, saying this was blocked under the tenure of the previous head of the Office of Human Resources Management, Jan Beagle. On accountability, he said that "heads should roll" over the failure in the implementation of the UN's system of performance reviews.

But at the level of UN Management, heads never figuratively roll; there is little accountability. Ms. Beagle was rewarded with an assignment to Geneva, using an UNCTAD deputy chief post the work of which she is not doing. (It is said that the Thai chief of UNCTAD Supachai Panitshpakdi now wants this post back, watch this space.) There's not even accountability on the failure to move the UN's accountability proposal. With much fanfare, the Department of Management said it would create a ten-person Office of Accountability, with at the top a new D-2 post. Cynics said this post was specifically created to reward, a la Jan Beagle, long time official Nancy Hurtz-Soyka. Then Inner City Press was told, the report on the new Office is coming out soon, no questions would be answered until the report came out.

Well, even during the March resumed session of the UN's budget committee, no report on the proposal came out from the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions. Ms. Barcena confirmed this Thursday afternoon in the basement. So the question is, who is going to be accountable for this failure to move even this accountability proposal?

Also present Thursday in the basement was the new Assistant Secretary General of the Office of Human Resources Management, Catherine Pollard. As previously reported, prior to her being named to the post, Inner City Press e-mailed Ms. Pollard a copy of a staff complaint against her, seeking in fairness her comment before publication. She did not respond, then or since. Thursday she spoke only briefly, and she was generally greeted with openness, and a hope she will at least be more open that her predecessor.

Ms. Barcena also confirmed that even Ban's proposal to move the UN to one form of contract (Barcena put it at three forms) would not break down the wall between General Services and Professional staff. She showed Inner City Press a glimpse of a binder of color-coded proposals, some that the Secretary-General could implement on his own, the rest requiring General Assembly approval. Perhaps at Wednesday's session on reform, some commitments were obtained. This is not known, because the discussion on transparency was held behind closed doors. And, despite Ms. Barcena's statements for more than a year now about implementing a UN Freedom of Information policy, nothing has been done. Perhaps this, too, was discussed Wednesday in secret. Only at the UN...

Footnotes: while the topic was not mentioned at Thursday's basement session, rumors continue to circulate that Ms. Barcena will leave, either to ECLAC in Santiago or the UN's University of Peace in Costa Rica, and that her successor may be the German Joaquim Rucker, who is said to have recently threatened, along with his deputy Larry Rossin, to resign from the UN Mission in Kosovo, but was told if he left UNMIK, there could be no USG of Management post. Other rumors have UN Georgia mission chief Jean Arnault being considered to replace his fellow Frenchman Jean-Marie Guehenno as head of UN Peacekeeping. Unlike Ruecker, Arnault at least has filled out his public financial disclosure, noting a country house in Guatemala. Coming full circle, it's said Guehenno is being considered as a special envoy on Northern Kosovo, to "pull a Bosnia," as one insider put it, meaning to negotiate some form of cantonization or even de facto partition. We'll see.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un2mgmtreform041008.html

At UN, Ban's Budget Add-Ons Top $1.1 Billion, Criticism of Political Missions and Mandate "Alignment"

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un2budget032708.html

UNITED NATIONS, March 27 -- The UN budget committee has been asked for over $1.1 billion in "add-ons" to the over $4 billion budget adopted in December, a document obtained by Inner City Press shows. This includes $56 million for a new computer system, $100 million to construct a new UN building in Baghdad, and $1.5 million for "accountability / results-based management." According to the document, which Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson is quick to point out is only a proposal, an additional $184 million would be spent on the UN's so-called Capital Master rehabilitation plan, $6.8 million would be devoted to a controversial conference in Durban, and over $100 million would be to off set currency miscalculations.

On March 25, Inner City Press asked spokesperson Michele Montas if the "budget add-ons that the Secretariat has requested are $1.1 billion, a 25 per cent increase over the previous budget...when the presentation was made, there was only about a 2 per cent increase, how does the Secretary-General explain this over $1 billion additional request?"

Two hours after the briefing, the Spokesperson's Office responded

"in fact, the Secretariat has only provided a projection of how financing needs would evolve, if the Member States were to support a wide range of political missions and management reform proposals currently on the table. However, that projection is not the final amount, since this is a consultative process and its ultimate outcome will be determined by the Member States at large in the General Assembly, and not by the Secretariat. Also, the costs for special political missions, including Iraq and Afghanistan, cannot in any sense be considered 'administrative costs.'"

But what about the computer / "enterprise systems" in the UN's list?

The largest chunk of the add-ons concerns Special Political Missions. One of these, for Nepal, was slashed by the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, which for example stated of "a position... proposed in the Medical Section for a Medical Officer" that "in view of the lateness of the proposal and the plan to maintain the operational level of the Mission only until the end of July 2008, the Committee recommends against approval of this post. The functions should be provided for from within existing capacity." The same could be said of many of the proposed add-ons.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un2budget032708.html

As UN Budget Metastasizes, Swing Space at 380 Madison Avenue Is Eyed, Security In Question

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un1cmp022608.html

UNITED NATIONS, February 26 -- They ask us for more and more money, Japan's deputy permanent representative to the UN Takahiro Shinyo told Inner City Press last week. He predicted the UN asking for up to $1 billion in add-ons, including some related to the already-funded Capital Master Plan. Japan has already paid $285 million, he said.

A question submitted in writing on Monday to the office of Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson about these budget add-on was not, at end of Tuesday, answered. UN Controller Warren Sach, absent for some time, was spotted in the lobby on Tuesday. Budget committee meetings are just around the corner. Even the briefings, on security and by the Department of Management's Alicia Barcena, will be closed to the press and public. Will supposed freedom of information be discussed behind closed doors?

When the UN goes into exile from its iconic 40 story tower, most will probably head to 380 Madison Avenue, where a lease is reportedly being finalized by UN Assistant Secretary General Michael Adlerstein. A recent visit found the building without sufficient security, a matter to be addressed with New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg, it is said. Given the bombing in Algeria, the panel on which is only now being named, improvements to the UN's so-called swing space will be needed. But was this unforeseen?

And see, www.innercitypress.com/un1cmp022608.html

UN's Budget Advisor Rajat Saha Criticizes Lack of Planning, from Lockheed Martin's No-Bid Contract to Travel Costs

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/sahasacabq010608.html

UNITED NATIONS, January 6 -- Mistrust continues to grow between the UN's administration and its member states, the outgoing chairman of its budget advisory committee told Inner City Press on January 3. In an hour-long interview, Rajat Saha, who chaired the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions since September 2005, detailed a system in which UN departments underestimate by up to 200 percent how much they'll spend on travel, and ask for funding for employment posts that they then leave vacant for months and years. "They should lose those posts," Mr. Saha recommended, and "those responsible should be held accountable."

Concerning the high-profile African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur, UNAMID, Mr. Saha reiterated the ACABQ's criticism of the UN's $250 million sole source contract with U.S. military contractor Lockheed Martin. "We felt this could have been dealt with better through advance planning," Saha said, specifying that the contract, for infrastructure in Sudan's Darfur region, could have been put out to bid rather than awarded without competition to Lockheed's subsidiary Pacific Architects & Engineers, PAE.

The ACABQ's report on UNAMID recounts that the "Committee was informed that, following negotiations on the original bid valued at $700 million, a contract was awarded to PAE/Lockheed in the value of $250 million." Saha explained that this claim had been made in the context of "too many Press reports. Members of the Advisory Committee were quite amused to read documents that perhaps you were instrumental" in unearthing, referring to Inner City Press' publication of, among others, letters of UN official Jane Holl Lute in April 2007 pushing Lockheed for a no-bid contract, and Headquarters Committee on Contracts minutes highly critical of the lack of competition. Ultimately, the General Assembly approved UNAMID's budget, with an expression of concern about the sole source Lockheed contract, and a call for an investigation by the UN's Office of Internal Oversight Services.

Saha repeatedly distinguished the role of his committee from that of OIOS or the UN's Board of Auditors. He said that ACABQ does not demand documents from the Secretariat, and is not an auditor. He acknowledged that ACABQ does not look at the UN's system of trust funds. "We make recommendations," he said, that member states are free to accept or reject. He noted with obvious pride that under his tenure, 95 percent of ACABQ's recommendations were accepted. He also described how he brought about consensus in the Committee when required, by at a certain point issuing his own summary of the "preponderance of views." If no one formally objected to this description, the position was then that of the Committee as a whole. It's a matter of timing, he said, of knowing when to cut off debate and produce a recommendation.

One UN debate that Saha suggests should be cut off is that on so-called "Systemwide Coherence," also called "One UN." On January 3 Saha told Inner City Press, "There will come a time when there can't be anymore conferences" on the topic, but a concrete recommendation will have to be made to the ACABQ. On January 4, Inner City Press asked UN spokesperson Michele Montas, "where does it stand in terms of actually making a proposal? Is it anticipated that the Secretariat will come out with some kind of a plan with budget impact and all of that?" The Spokesperson answered yes, but in response to a follow-up question about the timing of making a proposal, said she didn't know.

Among the deficits of knowledge of which Saha is most critical is the failure to reasonably predict spending on such budget items as travel, and the failure to fill posts for which authorization has been sought from the General Assembly. Both issues are detailed in one of Saha's lack reports, A/62/589 issued on December 17, which states that "a number of sections have exceeded the level of appropriation for travel of staff by more than twenty five per cent." A table shows, for example, that the while the UN's Office of Human Resources Management projected it would spend $509 million on travel over two years, it spent $1.191 billion, a cost overrun of 134 percent. The Office of the Under-Secretary-General for Management, which oversees budget presentations to the ACABQ, over-spent by a whopping 252 percent.

Saha characterized as "bizarre" the UN's policy on staff mobility, also overseen by the Department of Management. He contrasted the UN's inaction on this, which leaves many staff "slogging it out in difficult posts," with the policies of various member states, including his own country, India. In the service of the Indian foreign ministry, Saha was sent to postings in South Korea, Libya, Switzerland and Bangkok. While saying that UN staff would benefit from seeing what takes place in the field, Saha predicted "you will run into problems with the union," and suggested that additional money be spend on staff morale. While Saha also spoke in favor of the so-called harmonization of UN contracts, Staff Union sources have told Inner City Press this is often a code-word for reducing staff to the lowest common denominator, and a way to circumvent hiring rules and standards by "normalizing" that status of people brought in as favors or nepotism through the UN Pension Fund and Departments of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) or Field Support (DFS).

Saha said he learned, in visits to DPKO missions from Haiti to the Democratic Republic of Congo, that the UN's claim to have "integrated missions" is not effective in these two countries. Of Sierra Leone and the Ethiopia-Eritrea mission, he said "more should be done." These are additional issues to be addressed by DFS's Jane Holl Lute, along with unanswered questions about her pushing for Lockheed Martin's no-bid contract, criticized now by Saha's ACABQ and the General Assembly.

The background to Thursday hour-long interview was a previous misunderstanding, in which Inner City Press outside the Advisory Committee's basement off asked Saha as its chairman questions about the North Korea scandal of the UN Development Program, then quoted him in the resulting article. This is not the way it's done with ACABQ, apparently, although its administrative office does not provide information either. After some months of rueful smiles and a series of "no comments," Saha conclude "we both want the UN to work better," and agreed to the interview, in his personal capacity. Saha explained the secrecy in which ACABQ works as necessary to insulate its members from politics, from demands by their countries. "We are a technical body," he said. "If it's exposed," members will ask "why go against their country?" Saha's successor is Susan McLurg from the United States.

Rajat Saha is now returning to India and re-joining its foreign service. He said he plans to return first to his birthplace, Calcutta, and catch up on reading, astronomy and even astrology. Then he will accept his next diplomatic posting. Since he's already covered South Korea, Libya, Switzerland and Bangkok, then on the UN General Assembly's Fifth Committee before nine years on ACABQ, one hopes that his extensive knowledge of the UN and its budgetary process is fully used. We wish him well and hope to hear more from him.

And see, www.innercitypress.com/sahasacabq010608.html