Uggh. It looks like the UN needs to do some serious house cleaning as well? This entire article is sickening to read. The one portion of this report that I wanted to point out, which ties in with what we have been talking about over on Jake’s and Eeben’s site lately, is this:
Another recommendation is that the U.N. organizations “establish a vendor performance database to be utilized in the procurement process”-in other words, keep a systematic record of how well the companies that sell goods and services to the U.N. are actually performing. The absence of such a database, the inspectors point out, “practically renders evaluations useless.”
So who came first, poor PMC’s and PSC’s, or a poor system of procurement at the UN? Either way, this is good. The UN must become a learning organization, and the same scrutiny that is being leveled at the US contracting crap, is finally being aimed at the UN. I also wonder how many lives have been lost, all because of the poor leadership and terrible architecture in this world sponsored organization? –Matt
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UN’s Procurement Business is Managerial Disaster, Report Reveals
Monday , March 09, 2009
By George Russell
EXCLUSIVE: The United Nations’ $10 billion procurement business-the buying of goods and services for its operations worldwide-is a managerial disaster, in which its own procedures are not followed, documentation is often missing and the total amount spent on consultants is unknown, according to a damning report now being quietly circulated at the world body.
Moreover, the U.N.’s top managers have apparently been failing to meet requests from the U.N. General Assembly to fix the situation since at least 2001.
The conclusions appear in a sharply-worded, 40-page note to the U.N.’s top managers that was delivered in early December. The note, obtained by FOX News, appears to confirm a dismal portrait of the U.N.’s major money-spending activities that the organization has often vehemently denied.
The inspectors who prepared the latest management report work for a specialized, Geneva-based watchdog of the world organization known as the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU). The JIU’s job is to assess and improve the efficiency and coordination of the U.N. worldwide through its inspection and recommendation process.
Its prescriptions for improving management, however, only have the force of recommendations –and in this case, the inspectors note, they made some of the same suggestions as far back as 1999, with little apparent effect.
The new document bears the numbing title of “Corporate Consultancies in United Nations System Organizations,” and for its first 13 pages is mainly a highly-critical examination of U.N. usage of consultants for such things as information management, management restructuring and internal analysis.
Click here to read the report.
When it comes to hiring consultants, the inspectors also find the U.N. as a whole badly wanting — starting with the fact that, as the report notes, “in the United Nations system, there is no definition of corporate consultancy,” and the organization apparently doesn’t even know how much money it is spending on the service.