The Hindu Business Line : UN's bureaucratic malaise — A prescription that does not ensure cure

There is every chance that the UN members will put Mr Kofi Annan's proposals in the cold storage. What the UN bureaucracy needs is a shock treatment with a set of rule-of-thumb prescriptions.

Organisations, as they grow old, are afflicted, like human beings, by different kinds of maladies. The most familiar is arthritis, or stiffness of limbs leading to immobility. They are equally prone to palsy which is marked by directionless, uncoordinated, involuntary shakings of the various parts of the body, resulting in a lot of wasted time and energy. Then, there is carcinoma (cancer ) manifesting in uncontrolled growth of posts and personnel combined with declining productivity and output, and potentially fatal haemorrhage of resources. The most cruel disease is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a slow and progressive robbing of the capacity to respond to any sort of command and control, resulting in a prolonged vegetative existence followed by eventual conking out.

"Static Secretariat"

There are rare cases of the same organisation showing symptoms of multiple ailments. Reports of frequent tests and scans relating to that obese and doddering sexagenarian talk shop, the United Nations Organisation (UN), show it to be one. It is kept going at a cost of close to $10 billion a year, burdened by more than 29,000 staff members enjoying tax-free salaries and sumptuous pension and perks (like diplomatic immunity), impervious to any kind of efforts at bringing about improvements in its functioning or enforcing norms of performance and accountability.

The less achievement it has got to show, the more its penchant for submerging Member States and the Secretariat with a Niagara-like force under an unceasing barrage of 275 reports in a single year, with the Budget report alone containing 35 sections and 26,000 pages — making cumulatively little impact on official or public opinion, since they lack lucidity, analysis and focus.

If you think these are harsh observations, hearken to the Secretary-General (SG), Mr Kofi Annan, himself: "... my assessment is — if I may put it bluntly in one sentence — that in many respects (the UN's) present regulations and rules do not respond to current needs; and indeed that they make it very hard for the Organisation to conduct its work efficiently or effectively... the truth is that our current rules and regulations were designed for an essentially static Secretariat, whose main function was to service conferences and meetings of Member States, and whose staff worked mainly at Headquarters... That is not the United Nations of today. What is needed... is a radical overhaul of the entire Secretariat — its rules, its structure, its systems — to bring it more in line with today's realities, and enable it to perform the new kinds of operations that Member States now ask and expect of it."

Thunderous silence

For a long time, the industrial nations which foot 77 per cent (the US — 22 per cent; Japan — 20 per cent; countries of the European Union — 35 per cent) of the bill had been pressuring the SG to come up with proposals for a root-and-branch overhaul of the UN Secretariat to make it lean, purposeful and efficient. Some fitful dusting up of the accumulated procedural and systemic cobwebs was made now and then based on reports of consultants hired at enormous expense, but it made no perceptible difference to the functioning of the UN bureaucracy.

The industrial nations could not take it any more. Faced with their threat of stopping their contributions if there was no evidence of reforms process being initiated by June 30, Mr Annan has presented to the General Assembly on March 7 a report somewhat pretentiously titled "Investing in the United Nations".

To no one's surprise, it has been received with thunderous silence by the Member Nations numbering 191. It is easy to see why it is a damp squib. The very first thing to hit them between the eyes is its cost.

In the name of rejuvenating and reinvigorating a bloated bureaucracy, the SG has asked them to pick up an additional tab of a whopping $510 million, on the plea that "... Member States must be prepared to make a significant investment, if the United Nations is to reach the level of effectiveness that they and their peoples are entitled to expect... .there are real savings to be made through these proposals, since over time they will reduce the cost of many of our activities, by ensuring that they are carried out more simply... "

It must be a singularly unexciting proposition for the industrial nations who will be called upon to make almost the entire "investment", with no indication of a clear-cut time-frame and credible modalities for phase-wise implementation of the new action plan and the extent to which the UN Budget would stand to gain at the end.

Developing countries too would rather have a lumbering, lackadaisical UN Secretariat: Those who have worked in any of the UN agencies would have seen functionaries swarming the corridors looking for tax-free loaves and fishes and wanting to take advantage of the many loopholes and laches in administration. There is every chance, therefore, that by tacit agreement, the UN membership will put Mr Annan's proposals in the cold storage for an indefinite period.

Nostrums in a nutshell

It will not be a great calamity were that to happen. For, the 23 nostrums in frothy and padded language taking 43 pages can be easily compressed in one paragraph, to wit: Better and faster recruitment procedures; parity between headquarters and field staff to facilitate mobility; career development; performance-related contract terms; reduction in the number of departments reporting directly to the SG; rewriting the job description of the Deputy SG so as to make him more accountable and responsible; upgrading the Secretariat-wide Information and Communications Technology network; creation of a new post of Chief Information Technology Officer; outsourcing of services; better control over procurement of goods and services; establishing a "change management" office; "staff buyout" (voluntary retirement); greater clarity and crispness in Budgets; consolidation of peace keeping accounts and trust funds; linking outcomes with outlays by stricter monitoring; simplifying reporting systems so as to cut down their number and achieve a better flow of information, advice and guidance and better interaction between the Secretariat and the General Assembly.

In themselves these are elementary and apply to any run-of-the-mill enterprise. There is plenty that the Secretary General, as the Chief Administrative Officer (as he calls himself), could have done by himself to tighten up administration by introducing many of the above measures at little cost, by redeploying the surplus personnel, getting rid of flab and shunning gimmicks like "change management office" and the like.

In fact, what the UN bureaucracy needs is a shock treatment with a set of rule-of-thumb prescriptions: Tax the salaries of personnel of UN and its agencies (adding $50 million to the kitty); strip them of diplomatic immunity; make all appointments by contracts; cut the number of employees, departments, agencies and field offices by half (for instance, there are as many as 28 bodies in the same field of food security, many committees such as the ones on public administration and reinventing government duplicating each other's work and costing a lot of money and consuming reams of paper); establish external independent boards to select candidates for jobs and oversee their performance, and to scrutinise offers and place orders for materials procurement; and set up a standing independent Ethics Commission to investigate complaints of malfeasance.

Mr Secretary General, adopt these simple remedies and see how the UN bureaucracy is galvanised into action!