ANNAN SEEKS RADICAL RESTRUCTURING OF UN

by Thalif Deen

(IPS) UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose beleaguered administration is facing charges of fraud, cronyism and mismanagement, wants to radically restructure the Secretariat by increasing investments in staff training, shrinking the organization's bloated bureaucracy and streamlining budgetary management.

The wide-ranging proposals, detailed in a yet-to-be-released landmark report titled "Investing in the United Nations," also include a call for outsourcing some of the UN's internal services -- including translations, printing and payroll processes -- to cheaper offshore locations, possibly India, South Africa and Thailand. The deadline for most of these proposed changes is September 2006.

"The present top management structure of the Secretariat is not well equipped to manage large and complex operations; and the secretary-general, as chief administrative officer, has too many people reporting to him directly."

"I am expected to be the world's chief diplomat, and to run a large and complex organization as it were in my spare time," Annan says.

To address these shortcomings, Annan wants the role of the deputy secretary-general (DSG) redefined so as to grant him formal authority and accountability for managing the organization's operational activities.

On Friday, Annan named Mark Malloch Brown of Britain, his former chief of staff, as the new DSG to succeed Louise Frechette of Canada. The post of DSG was created by the General Assembly in 1997 to support the secretary-general but the functions were less substantial.

Annan also wants the existing 25 UN departments and other entities currently reporting to the secretary-general to be re-grouped into organizational clusters, each led by a senior under-secretary-general.

"The biggest (of the department) controls billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people; the smallest a handful of people and almost no resources."

And in practice, he says, many heads of departments receive very little direct guidance from him, and are consigned to operate in isolated "silos," or expected to work together in loose "executive committees," without management support strong enough to ensure any real synergy.

The secretary-general also seeks an "urgent upgrading" of the Secretariat's information and communications technology (ICT) systems, and the appointment of a new chief information and technology officer.

"My vision is of a United Nations in which this inability has been cured by bringing in a new, top-rank technology leadership, able to develop and implement an information technology strategy for the United Nations as a whole."

The proposed investments for these far reaching changes amount to over half a billion dollars, and must be ultimately sanctioned by the UN's administrative and budgetary committee -- which has a reputation for wielding the ax on excessive UN spending.

The projected recurring costs of harmonising benefits for the staff in the field, including a proposed new cadre of peacekeepers, would be around 300 million dollars per year.

A "much-needed" doubling of resources dedicated to training and developing UN staff would amount to an additional 20 million dollars per annum, according to the report.

Annan is also seeking to replace the UN's outdated and fragmented information technology systems -- "largely dysfunctional from a legacy built up over decades" -- with a state-of-the-art system which could cost about 120 million dollars.

The secretary-general plans to rid the organization of dead wood with a "buy-out" plan. The estimated cost for buying-out 1,000 staff members is around 100 million dollars.

"I believe this is fully justified as an investment in the United Nations of the future, which must be staffed by people whose skills and aptitudes respond to its priorities," says Annan.

At the Millennium Summit of some 160 world political leaders, Annan was given a mandate to propose drastic managerial changes to improve the functioning of the Secretariat.

The summit also called for a review of all rules, regulations and policies in the areas of human resource management, budget and finance.

The 40-page report, which has been kept strictly under wraps and was obtained by IPS Friday, is to be presented to the 191-member General Assembly next week. Annan is also expected to answer questions from UN staffers at a town hall meeting.

"Today's United Nations is vastly different from the Organization that emerged from the San Francisco conference more than 60 years ago," says Annan. "In the past decade in particular, it has undergone a dramatic operational expansion in a wide range of fields, from human rights to development."

Most notably, there has been a four-fold increase in peacekeeping, with 80,000 peacekeepers and a five-billion-dollar budget.

Currently, more than half of the 30,000 UN staff members are serving in the field, with only 10,340 in the Secretariat.

"The Organization's increasingly complex mandates require a new skills profile, to enable it to respond, in an integrated way, to new needs in areas as diverse as humanitarian assistance, peacekeeping, electoral assistance, and drugs and crime."

Therefore, says the report, "it needs to be able to recruit and retain leaders, managers and personnel capable of handling large, complete, multi-disciplinary operations with increasingly high budgets."

The report has a laundry list of complaints:

- The United Nations suffers from a highly detailed, cumbersome and insufficiently strategic budgeting process, with over 55,000 pages of documentation produced, more than 150 separate UN Trust Funds, and 35 distinct peacekeeping accounts, each with its own support costs and arrangements;

- The recruitment process at the Secretariat is "simply too slow and reactive for the dynamic, frequently changing demands of a highly operational Organization." On average, it takes 174 days from the time a vacancy announcement is issued to the time a candidate is selected for a job;

- There has been "inadequate progress" to improve geographical distribution and gender balance, both of which are essential for a truly diverse international civil service. The proportion of women at professional levels and above "is still unacceptably low at 38 percent" despite a General Assembly resolution calling for 50:50 gender parity;

- One-third of professional posts in peacekeeping operations remain vacant -- "an unacceptable and unsustainable state of affairs";

- The United Nations spends one percent of its staff budget on training and development, compared to three or four times that amount in other international organizations;

- The Organization uses a plethora of different types of contractual arrangements for hiring staff, which are cumbersome, difficult to administer, and result in staff being treated unfairly;

- The internal justice system is "slow and cumbersome, and fails to strike the necessary balance between effective managerial control and staff members' right to due process."

The report also calls for the strengthening of procurement services. The value of UN global procurement has increased steadily, from around 400 million dollars in 1997 to over two billion dollars last year. Projected purchases for this year are estimated at over 2.5 billion dollars.

Annan is seeking changes in the financial and budgetary management of the world body, including the elimination of current constraint's on the secretary-general's ability "to move funds or posts around according to need."

"The secretary-general's formal budgetary discretion has remained unchanged for more than 30 years," he says. "The ability of the secretary-general to shift money between programs and re-allocate posts without member state approval is weaker today than before 1974, when the need for such flexibility was far less."

The report is also calling for the creation of a Change Management Office "to see through the implementation of the reforms, and possibly liaise with a small group of member states on reform matters."