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UN Performance Problems UN Management Accountability Struggles Where is the Rule of Law? Inadequate UN Oversight Recent Developments
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While
the JIU was busy ensuring its survival in "[Most participants] agreed that [the oversight bodies -- JIU, OIOS, Board of Auditors] are
in need of better coordination and would benefit from staff that is both
more competent and knowledgeable of their jobs. The JIU, in particular,
was criticized. To perform
oversight, one needs to have an intimate knowledge of programs, but staff
at JIU are seen as having insufficient knowledge of the programs
they oversee (betrayed by their frequent unsophisticated questions about
program operations.) The
oversight staff is small, they are not adequately versed in UN programs,
and they rely on what is delivered to them by those they oversee. As a result, JIU's oversight
cannot be more than 'impressionistic.' With these liabilities, participants urged reexamination of the
output, composition, and effectiveness of the JIU. At an average cost of $400,000,
JIU reports are simply too costly.
Several suggested [obtaining] far better work from the private
sector. Others believed that
the JIU is poorly designed, and its mandate is not clear. Numerous participants
recommended JIU be eliminated altogether. [Another suggestion was
that] at a minimum, if the JIU cannot be significantly altered some of its
functions should be contracted out to the private
sector." Stanley Foundation, "Making UN reform work:
Improving Member State- Secretariat relations", Report on Conference of February 21-23, 1997,
pp. 27-28.
Yves Beigbeder's third
decade-by-decade assessment of the JIU in 1997 was also much tougher than
its predecessors: "The first priority
is to ensure
[qualified] inspectors
with a proper mix of
expertise. Nominating
countries should offer multiple candidates. External auditors are not
appointed among serving or retired diplomats: asking diplomats to
undertake management surveys and give management advice to executive heads
is a sure recipe for
quality problems and the quiet burying of their recommendations.
If the General
Assembly does not
[properly
select] Inspectors, a drastic remedy would be to abolish the Unit
[or] letting the JIU
die a natural death by attrition.
An intermediate
solution would consist in trying to improve the expertise and efficiency
of the Unit and to reduce its staff costs. The 'top-heavy' unit
could be reduced
from 11 to 3 or 5 [inspectors
with non-political,
non-diplomatic [management experts added] at senior professional levels.
Governments have to decide whether the Unit should be abolished or
retained. If retained, the
Unit should be re-formed so that it becomes what it was meant to be:
a respected watchdog in identifying and publicizing administrative
errors or abuses, mismanagement, inefficiency and duplication, a mentor in
proposing management reforms, a competent and independent body of
international management experts." Yves Beigbeder,
The internal management of United Nations organizations: The long quest
for reform, St. Martins
Press, New York, 1997, pp. 41- 45.
A
1999 expert group meeting on financial oversight and accountability in the
UN system also examined oversight work by the Board of Auditors, OIOS, and
the JIU. The Board of
Auditors drew little criticism, and the OIOS received favorable comments
(although with some doubts and a very pertinent question of who polices
the oversight police.) As to
the JIU, however, the group found that: "
the [JIU]
was conceived as the scourge of inefficiency and
duplication across U.N. agencies.
(Instead, the terror the JIU actually inspires in agencies today
has far less to do with fear that its inspectors will uncover embarrassing
inefficiencies than the drain it will impose on [agency] budgets, which
pay for
JIU inspections and reports.
doubts about the usefulness of
its past work haunt discussion of its future prospects. Widely viewed as having
failed to meet the expectations for it, the JIU suffers from a lack of
respect even within the U.N. system
The JIU was allocated $4.6
million a year] for 1996-1997
If the debate on the [OIOS] reflects the discomfort of an agency
viewed as so credible and effective as to be too powerful, that on the
[JIU] demonstrates the difficulty of regaining credibility once it is
lost. The showcase of [UN
reform in the 1970s], by the 1980s the unit had earned a reputation
for reports recycling conventional wisdom that were remarkable mainly for
their stupefying superficiality.
" United Nations Association of the USA, "Conference
on financial oversight and accountability in the United Nations system",
October 30 - November 1, 1998, Princeton, NJ, USA, April 1999, pp.
4-8. [emphasis added]
Since
the UN is the UN, the JIU paid only fleeting attention to these annoying
critiques. It was simply
concerned with getting back to "business as usual" -- not independent external
oversight, but "jobs for the boys" -- as clearly reaffirmed by its
victorious battle in the "informal consultations" at the General
Assembly's Fifth Committee in 1997 through 1999. [Note: There have been only three women
among the 50-some JIU Inspectors since 1978, all of them serving within
the past decade.] In
the UN culture, this diplomatic takeover of the JIU is very
understandable. It allows people from Member State missions, in many
cases, to increase their incomes from as little as a few thousand dollars
or less a month in their national service to a very handsome $10,000-plus
monthly from the UN. It also
allows them to enjoy all the allowances, benefits, travel, VIP status,
very generous pensions thereafter, and, far from least -- no performance pressure to do any
work. In addition, it
provides small (or very small) countries a chance at a top UN job: JIU
Inspectors have come inter alia from Barbados, Burkina Faso, the
Dominican Republic, Jordan, Mauritania, Romania, and Tanzania. [Note: The five permanent members of the UN
Security Council always had
JIU posts reserved,
but have not had that much interest. The United Kingdom dropped out in
the early 1980s, and the French lost an election at the end of the 1980s
to Greece (about four of the "Group B" western countries usually
propose candidates for their
group's two allocated Inspector posts, thus adding at least a little
political competition to the process.) The Americans (the traditional JIU
"sponsors") were ignominiously voted off the JIU in 1998, but fought their
way back in in 2002. Only
Russia has always had a seat, and China took its seat for the very first
time in 2003.] In
February 2002, however, things heated up again. The General Assembly
resumed the old calls for more timely JIU reports and high-priority topics
that would deal with concrete problems and provide action-oriented
recommendations, and more evaluation-oriented work (all of which which had
been recommended, to no avail, as far back as 1986.) And, in January 2003, the Assembly
repeated these many admonitions, and requested the Unit to report
thereon.
"Report of the Joint Inspection Unit", General
Assembly resolutions 56/245 of 5 February 2002, and 57/284 A-B of 29 January
2003.
These
two resolutions brought another burst of JIU reform rhetoric. A first
report noted that since the General Assembly had approved the JIU
permanent statute in 1976, "momentous changes" had occurred and the
organizations had greatly improved their resource management. Along with this evolution, the
role of the JIU) should have become more relevant. The Unit, following
earnest "in-depth" internal reviews, identified its weaknesses as more
chiefs (the Inspectors) than
indians (staff), which could be rectified by decreasing the former or
increasing the latter. The Unit has no power of decision, and action on
its recommendations is "too rare an occurrence." The Unit's work programme is a
mishmash that requires a strategy (an old promise, which the Unit
presented, conceptually, in a lengthy annex). "Report of the [JIU] on the preliminary
review of its statute and working methods: Note by the Secretary-General",
UN document A/58/343 of 5 September 2003, Part II.
Two
months later the JIU issued a more detailed analysis. Some agencies liked the idea
of reducing the number of Inspectors, and this could be considered. The
General Assembly, should establish a new job description for Inspectors;
carefully review [future] candidates proposed and the
"appropriate ratio" between Inspectors and staff; and choose a better mix
of study types -- among
audits, inspections, and investigations. In
this and in yet a third paper, the JIU stoutly (but very vaguely)
defended its record. It spoke of its "huge accumulated
experience" with agency operations, a sudden new desire to launch dynamic
investigations of waste and mismanagement, its great potential as a
management consulting group, and more informal consultations and JIU
"notes" to work more closely with the agencies, all as part of a new
JIU "strategic framework" and
"risk assessments". In April 2004, the General Assembly "took note" of
this JIU "internal reform process", and decided to continue discussions at
its 59th session in the autumn of 2004. "Report of the [JIU] on the in-depth
review of its statute and working methods: Note by the Secretary-General",
UN document A/58/343/Add. 1 of
18 November 2003, "Report of the [JIU] on the in-depth review of its
statute and working methods: Note by the Secretary-General", UN document
A/58/343/Add. 2 of 17
February 2004 , and
So,
once again, IO Watch finds that the JIU very sincerely reviews itself and
finds itself to be "OK", but still ready for rigorous self-assessment and
reform. This time it does
admit that maybe there are too many inspectors, and that the JIU Statute
could be reexamined (a dangerous opening of Pandora's box, but one that
the JIU hopes or bets it can win during "informal consultations" on the
matter at the General Assembly, in alliance with its diplomatic
friends.)
However,
the JIU then goes overboard, arguing that the current Inspectors and JIU
staff (most of whom are new, and with no management analysis experience)
can properly use JIU's "huge experience", suddenly perform professional
investigations of waste and mismanagement, act as management consultants
and advisors, and do much more informal (i. e., non-public) work with the
agencies. IO
Watch has presented a factual (not rhetorical) review and update of the
undistinguished and declining JIU performance record over the past 35
years, and its recent
survival battles. The sharp, persistent, and consistent criticisms
of poor JIU performance and calls for its reform (or even abolition) still
apply, as cited in the pointed quotations from the preceding subsection:
?
the
US GAO reports in 1974 and 1979, and the first Beigbeder assessment in
1979; ?
WIPO
in 1981; ? ILO and FAO officials in
1985; ? the "Group of 18" experts, the US
GAO, and Ghebali in 1986; ? Beigbeder in 1987 and the CCAQ
inter-agency committee in 1988; ? the General Assembly, throughout
the late 1980s and
early 1990s; ? Hόfner in 1991 and Alves in
1991; ? the ACABQ and the
Washington Post in 1992; ? Thornburgh in 1993;
? Childers and Urquhart, and Spiers
in 1994, and the
International Documents Review and Righter in
1995; ? the CCAC and CCPOC interagency
bodies, and especially the ACC group of UN system executive heads, in
1995-1997, and Gordenker in 1996; ? the ILO and UNESCO breakaway
attempts, the Stanley
Foundation experts, and Beigbeder again in 1997;
? and the UNA/USA seminar in
1999.
Paul
Light's excellent criteria for determining the oversight effectiveness of
inspector generals provide a good set of standards with which to assess
JIU performance, as was done with the OIOS in an earlier
subsection. "
defining
effectiveness in purely organizational or dollar terms is far too
narrow. Effectiveness
also rests in what is best for government.
Using this broader
definition of effectiveness prompts at least five questions of IG
operations: (1) How professional are the
offices? (2) How deep is the coverage? (3) How great are the savings? (4) How good are the cases? (5) How visible are the results? The first
two questions deal with inputs
the final three
with outputs which in turn give at least some sense of the impacts on
fraud, waste, and abuse.
Light, Paul C., Monitoring government: Inspectors General and the search for accountability, Brookings, Washington, D.C., 1993, pp. 204, 220-223. [emphasis added.] And extra transparency is suddenly provided by the JIU
itself.
After years of keeping a very, very low profile in Geneva, a JIU
internet website suddenly blossomed in 2004, providing for the first time
public access to all recent JIU reports, its annual reports, relevant
General Assembly resolutions, current JIU reform promises, biographical
information on the current Inspectors, and other material. [Note: The
JIU website is at www.unsystem.org/jiu/new/home.htm .] At this pivotal point of renewed consideration of
JIU's future, IO Watch presents the following twelve summary items to
assess current JIU performance in light of the many previous expert
criticisms, the Light oversight criteria, and the up-to-date JIU website
information.
Highly-trained and skilled people are essential for
any organization, especially one reviewing complex management and
performance issues worldwide and throughout the UN and the UN system. However, an
analysis of the background of current JIU Inspectors, presented on the new
JIU website, shows the same old amateurism so rightly and repeatedly
criticized in the past. Only one of the ten current Inspectors (one post is
vacant) seems fully qualified for his work: a certified public accountant,
a former UN director of administration, with previous experience on
oversight and audit bodies. All the others were essentially career
foreign ministry people, with most citing service as their country's
representatives at various UN bodies. Seven of the ten were once members of
ACABQ (although it is not known if any of them were among the three of the
16 total ACABQ members who are required to be actual, recognized
"financial experts".) Of the nine unqualified Inspectors, two did have
masters' degrees in business administration, while the others had no
management degrees. None of the nine cited any relevant professional
certification; training programmes or even single courses completed in
audit, evaluation, or investigation; or membership in professional
management societies. Only one inspector had ever written or
published any paper or management report (on UN reform). And among
those who disclosed their age, all were between 57 and 65, (i.e., many
beyond UN retirement age.) The professional management analysis qualifications,
experience and achievements, and competencies of the eight JIU research
officers and five management assistants are not specified at all. The JIU
did undergo a drastic turnover of its professional staff (some more than
once) in the last half-dozen years, which thus erased the "institutional
memory" of its former staff. It would therefore seem important to assess
as well the specific competence of the new and old JIU staff, in
determining overall JIU "due diligence" in the essential matter of
professional fitness for the work to be done.
2. PRODUCTIVITY The business of the JIU is very simple: to prepare
action-oriented expert reports for the General Assembly and other UN
system governing bodies on the efficiency of UN operations and the proper
use of funds.
Apparently because the JIU now produces so few reports, however, it
downplays this central task -- the introductory statement of the aims of
JIU on its website never
even mentions the word "reports". Instead, the Unit now argues for
and promises extensive "consultation" with governing bodies and
Secretariats (i.e., activities with no tangible output but much pleasant
travel to New York and European headquarters cities of UN system
organizations, see also "travel costs" below.) In the last decade, from 1994 through 2003, the JIU
issued a total of 80 reports (not counting some "notes," which have even
less impact since they go only to executive heads, to do with as they
please.)
The JIU average is eight reports per year, (not even one per
Inspector), and for 24 report-preparation people in total. The reports
are also only about 30 pages long, and rely heavily on opinions rather
than detailed and original analysis. At a cost of some $4 million a year
to operate the JIU, each such report costs about $500,000. Furthermore, Inspectors vary greatly in their
individual productivity. As shown on the JIU website, in 2001, of the six
total JIU reports, 3 inspectors each produced one report alone, 3 others
were involved in "shared" reports, another coordinated a "Unit" report,
and 4 Inspectors produced no
reports at all. In 2002, a rare burst of energy led to
12 reports involving all 11 Inspectors. The old pattern, however, resumed in 2003, with 1
Inspector producing 2 reports alone, 2 others 1 report each, 5 others
crowding together on 2 more reports, and, again 3 Inspectors producing no reports at all
(there were apparently only six reports, since report 2003/4 seems to have
disappeared.)
The Inspectors, individually and collectively, are not a
high-productivity group. In fact, as of mid-August 2004, no JIU reports had been
issued less than one month before the new General Assembly begins in New
York (or at least put on the
website, which a Unit concerned about its future should do), indicating zero (that is 0.0)
reports produced by 11 Inspectors over a seven-month period. 3. WHO WRITES THE JIU
REPORTS? As noted in the introductory subsection, an
enthusiastic JIU chairman told the General Assembly's Fifth Committee in
1981 that JIU senior professional staff posts needed to be upgraded
because they write JIU reports and contribute the key ideas. The JIU has
subsequently been much more guarded when questioned directly about who
writes its reports, either evading the issue or stating that it is a
"shared responsibility" between Inspectors and JIU staff, which is however
never specifically explained. The situation has not changed. The JIU budget
submission for the biennium 2002-2003, for instance, clearly stated that
senior professional staff were "very deeply involved" in studies, but that
even junior professionals are expected to do a lot of report drafting, and
even clerical "management assistants" also prepare analyses and charts for
reports, although they have little if any management education and
skills.
In contrast, as already noted, most JIU inspectors
have almost no professional management analysis credentials, no
report-writing experience, no methodological expertise, and, often, some
real limitations in English -- the language in which all JIU reports
are now written. Altogether, the JIU has some 24 people producing eight
30-page reports each year, or about less than 1 page per person per month.
There must, in fact, be serious doubt that the Inspectors themselves honor
their basic and specific responsibility under the JIU Statute, namely
that: "The Inspectors shall draw up, over their own
signature, reports for which they are responsible and in which they shall
state their findings and propose solutions to the problems that they have
noted." Joint Inspection
Unit, Statute, United Nations, Geneva, 1978, Article 11, para.
2.
4. QUALITY
CONTROL The three assessment quotes from the late 1990s
presented earlier in this subsection summarize quite well the basic
criticisms of JIU. The Inspectors "have insufficient knowledge of the
programs they oversee" and "rely on what is delivered
by those they
oversee," so that JIU "oversight cannot be more than impressionistic" (the
experts at the Stanley Foundation meeting, 1997.) "Asking diplomats to
undertake management surveys and give management advice to executive heads
is a sure recipe for quality problems and the quiet burying of their
recommendations" (Beigbeder in 1997). And "the JIU suffers from a lack of
respect even within the U.N. system", having "earned a reputation for
reports recycling conventional wisdom that were remarkable mainly for
their stupefying superficiality" (UNA/USA conference, 1999). An old oversight unit aphorism says that "one bad
report spoils ten good ones," thus emphasizing the importance of careful
quality control. The JIU, however, relies on the "collective wisdom" of
its inspectors, which does not seem to help much, and a stack of
procedures and guidelines used by oversight professionals, which the JIU
ignores in practice. Many vague, or self-serving, careless or
unimportant,
recent JIU reports could be mentioned, but one in particular must
be noted. A JIU "evaluation" report in 2000, on a UN women's institute,
INSTRAW -- is perhaps the
worst evaluation report ever published anywhere. The institute
(the only UN organization located in the lead Inspector's home country)
has struggled (and continues to struggle) with funding and performance
problems. His
report was a spirited plea for the institute, finding it to be a
"remarkable success" and providing "very good value for money". However,
desperate to come up with something evaluative, the report pleaded lack of
time and cited only one actual assessment -- done by several Nordic
countries in 1991, eight years earlier, and itself not always favorable.
This JIU report is available for downloading on the JIU website. Joint Inspection "An
evaluation of the United Nations International Research and Training
Institute for the Advancement of Women (INSTRAW)", JIU/REP/99/2 of June 1999 , available on the JIU website. The JIU has still issued a few good reports in recent
years, such as an excellent analysis of UN recruitment, placement, and
promotion (see, on the JIU website, reports 1995/1 and 1996/6),
appointments of UN senior officials (2000/3), and the "results approach"
in the UN (2002/2). But there have been many more "so what?"
reports and some very questionable ones. Briefly, from among all the examples,
one could note: -- a mind-boggling JIU conceptual
study on calculating equitable "geographic distribution" formulas for
dividing up staff posts (1996/7), that was so disorderly that the
Inspectors had to apologize when presenting it to the Fifth Committee in
New York; -- a massive JIU report on a grand
reorganization of all UN system training institutions (1997/6), which
somehow neglected to identify those institutions -- the JIU
promised to issue an annex listing them, but then apparently forgot about
it; -- a potentially very useful JIU
report on the UN internal "administration of justice" system (2000/1),
which however failed totally to analyse the system's operations, costs,
and functioning, settling instead for much "heresay" gossip on ways to
patch up the old decrepit system (see this archive's subsection on that
topic); -- A self-serving JIU report on the
use of management consultants (2000/2) urged the use of available
"expertise" within the UN (including of course the JIU) or
"geographically-distributed" national experts, as opposed to "excessive
reliance on outside consultants", whom many UN system organizations now
regularly utilize; -- reports on the role of certain "civil
society" groups (2002/1) in UN development work and on "multilingualism"
(2002/11) are hardly the high-priority, concrete, reviews of "efficiency
and the proper use of funds" which JIU is mandated and repeatedly urged to
perform, although nothing has been quite as trivial as the JIU report
on
"Managing works of art" (1992/7); -- a rare JIU "mud on the boots" field
review, an
"evaluation" of the effectiveness of the already much-studied UN
system nation-building operation in East Timor (2002/10), was based on a
mere 5-day visit to that country, and paralleled a concurrent review by
the OIOS; and -- another grand "thought piece" on
"enhancements" and strategies to improve the UN budgetary process (2003/2)
gave almost no consideration to the central UN management culture
barriers, cited by OIOS in 2002 and many others before and since, that
have undermined this process for decades [as discussed in this archive's
subsection, inter alia, on Programme Planning System
(PPBE) .] [Note: again, all these JIU
reports are available for direct review or downloading under "JIU reports"
on the JIU website, at www.unsystem.org/jiu/new/home.htm .] 5. WORK PROGRAMMES A professional oversight unit has coherent and
well-formulated multi-year work programmes and sticks to them, while
making adjustments as time goes on. In the early 1980s the JIU also carried
out such processes, but subsequently, JIU work programming became
progressively more disorderly, with little sense of coherence. The JIU
proposes a batch of new studies each year, but many never start, or fall
by the wayside, or drag on for years and destroy their timeliness. The most
recent such episode came in 2002, when the JIU informed the General
Assembly that: "The current-year
work programme
contains five new reports and one new note. In addition
the Unit has been preparing at least 16 reports and notes, which have been
carried forward from previous years' [plural] work plans
" "Joint Inspection Unit: Note by
the Secretary-General" [work programme for 2002], 26 March 2002, para. 3.
In the event, the Unit published only 12 reports in
2002, and then, apparently exhausted, slumped back to only 6 or 7 in 2003.
A new crisis may be underway as (according to the website) no reports had
been issued by mid-August 2004. There seems to be a long-established JIU
annual work cycle of inaction in the spring and summer, followed by
energetic issuance of most of the reports between October and February,
which hardly gets them to the General Assembly in a timely fashion. The JIU thus often has as many as 20 studies underway,
plus others piled up and awaiting consideration in governing bodies. The JIU has
also spent little time in the past 15 years on the top-priority and
dominant peacekeeping, humanitarian, and development field operations of
the UN system.
Instead, the Inspectors concentrate on studies and visits at agency
headquarters programmes, particularly in New York and Europe. The 21st
century world spins ever faster, but the little JIU, sitting comfortably
in Geneva, can never even come close to catching up. 6 NEW "MANAGEMENT REVIEWS" A new feature of JIU work in the past half-dozen years
has been sweeping management and administrative review reports on entire
specialized agencies: ILO in 1999, UNESCO in 2000, WHO and ITU in 2001,
and FAO in 2002. Reviewing an organization's management system is a
formidable and complex task, which would require a large team and multiple
months of on-site work even if done by a large international management
consulting firm.
However, the JIU has somehow managed to churn out five
organisation-wide studies in the midst of its other work. The reports,
on review, seem very broad-brush, long on sweeping conclusions and facile
recommendations, but short on detailed and original analysis to back them
up. One must wonder, again, whether these studies are, as noted under
"Quality control" above, just received wisdom from fellow diplomats in the
national missions at these organizations, repackaged into a superficial
report.
The JIU study of UNESCO in 2000, for instance,
compares poorly with a similar but much more focused and analytical study
of UNESCO prepared by the US General Accounting Office in 1992. The JIU study
seems to be almost all prescription, with a summary containing 19
recommendations and a mind-boggling 48 sub-recommendations in seven pages
of very small print. The GAO study, however, was
predominantly analytical and systematic, with 12 total recommendations in
five areas which would fit comfortably on one page. Joint Inspection Unit, "Review
of management and Administration in the [UNESCO]," JIU/REP/200/4 of September 2000, and US General Accounting Office,
"UNESCO: Status of improvements in management, personnel, financial, and
budgeting practices," GAO/NSIAD-92-172, 1992. One more disturbing element is the motivation for
these sudden sweeping studies. They began only after the CEB (then the
ACC) group of UN system agency executive heads urged the General Assembly
to commission a critical review of JIU effectiveness, and ILO and UNESCO
sought to reduce their financial participation in the JIU. When JIU
survived this challenge, the first grand reviews that it made were of the
ACC, the ILO, and UNESCO. Revenge is a poor rationale for making management
reviews, especially reviews that badly overreach the analysts'
capacities. 7. TRAVEL COSTS Some 90 percent of JIU costs are staff costs,
especially for inspectors, but the Inspectors also get some $250,000 a
year to make their "on-the-spot" inquiries
around the world. This aspect deserves a little more coverage, because one
of the UN's deepest "secrets" is the widespread abuse of "official
missions",
and especially of automatic per diem payments amounting to several hundred
dollars per day), especially by the senior officials who travel most. The JIU itself has issued reports urging efficient
travel expenditures (see report 95/10 on the website) and tight control of
officials' attendance at meetings. Yet the Unit itself has been sharply
criticized several times for regarding equal annual travel fund shares as
a personal perquisite of Inspectors, rather than allocating funds for
varying field work requirements as needed. Each time (and again in September 2003
in their "reform" reports), the Inspectors dutifully promise to reform
their travel spending, but then continue on as before. In particular,
many concentrate on visits to agency headquarters cities in Europe, and
particularly on lengthy "attendance" at the General Assembly in New York
every autumn, under the guise of consultations or "presenting
their reports," rather than on duty and preparing reports in Geneva. It should also be noted that JIU's operations and
expenditures have apparently never been audited
during its 35 years of existence, by either the OIOS and its predecessors
or by the Board of Auditors, although both groups are obliged to
systematically audit all UN programmes and units. The UN, in
fact, provides administrative support to the JIU on behalf of the
specialized agencies who also pay its bills, but apparently the UN
oversight units have always given a "free pass" to their fellow overseers,
the
JIU.
8. JIU COSTS , SAVINGS,
AND
"VALUE FOR MONEY" Many analysts have quickly figured out JIU's costing:
it prepares an average of eight reports a year while spending some $4
million, so the average JIU report costs a very hefty $500,000. JIU
inspectors object to this obvious math, and attempt to evade the issue by
arguing that they must "consult" extensively (and informally) at agencies
and their governing body meetings, a conspicuously ambiguous and
hard-to-measure activity. The eight JIU reports each year average about 30 pages
each, or 240 pages of JIU reports a year. That is 22 pages a year (or less than 2
pages a month) per Inspector, but even that applies only if one ignores
all the report writing work done by JIU staff. Should someone
really receive $200,000 in annual salary and benefits for 10 years for
such a tiny output, particularly when the reports are often ignored? In addition, cost savings are a very important measure
of successful oversight work, and the JIU is indeed expected by Article 5
of its Statute to "ensure the proper use of funds." Yet JIU's cost
savings achieved in the past decade appear to be zero. In 1992 the
Inspectors hired a consultant, who estimated cost savings from JIU reports
from 1984-1991 of about $120 million. Not bad at all, but that amount applied
only IF the JIU
recommendations had been implemented, which could not be determined. Ever since,
however, when JIU is asked about cost savings, it simply refers to this
old report.
The JIU Inspectors are now suddenly pledging to root out waste and
mismanagement, but they lack the sophisticated professional skills to do
so. Some $75 million or more has probably been spent on
the JIU since 1968. But some agency officials argue
correctly that JIU work costs the UN system even more, since the
organizations must regularly spend much time responding to often-lengthy
JIU questionnaires, hosting Inspector visits, and processing and
commenting on JIU reports to their governing bodies. There is also
a second JIU cost add-on: many of the recommendations in JIU reports would
be quite expensive to implement, especially the many "motherhood" ones on
coordination among agencies, yet the JIU keeps right on making them. In 1994, the JIU promised the General Assembly and
other governing bodies of the UN system that it would institute some
important "good oversight practices" -- concentrating its work more on
cost-savings matters, and clearly stating in its reports the financial
implications of its recommendations, both those concerning cost savings
and that which would require additional resources to
implement. To the present day, it has never done so. On the issue of costs and
cost-benefit, the JIU is definitely a loser. "Report of the Joint Inspection Unit", UN document A/49/34, 1994, para. 65. &nbs | |||
