DEVELOPMENT: UNDP Plans to Revamp Bureaucracy

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 18 1999 (IPS) - The UN Development Programme (UNDP), jolted by a growing cash crisis, is planning to be more cost effective by restructuring and decentralising its sprawling bureaucracy.

UNDP’s new Administrator Mark Malloch Brown, who began his four-year term in July, has vowed to create “a new UNDP” which will be leaner, more efficient and geared to meet the needs of developing nations.

For starters he has dismissed three senior members of his management staff: Anton Kruiderink, Regional Director for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Fawaz Fokeladeh, Regional Director for Arab States and Thelma Awori, Regional Director for Africa.

All three, holding the rank of Assistant Administrators, have been asked to leave UNDP by the end of the year.

Until such time as new Regional Directors are appointed, Malloch Brown has named interim Officers-in-Charge to head the three regional bureaus.

In a note to the staff, Malloch Brown says that he had explained at the start of his term that he would spend his first few months assessing management needs of the agency before moving to consolidate a senior management team for the future.

“I said then and want to repeat now that, while certain changes would likely follow from that, this did not reflect on the service records of those who might be moving on,” he says.

“Rather, the central issue is that in any organisation undergoing a series of changes, it is essential for stakeholders and staff to know that there will be reinvigorated, sustained leadership at the helm to steer the organisation through new challenges.”

As he handed out the pink slips his week, Malloch Brown also paid tribute to the three senior managers for their “extraordinary contributions to UNDP.”

Under a proposed new restructuring programme, Malloch Brown also plans to relocate all Regional Bureaus based in New York, to the field.

The changes come at a time when the UNDP’s core income has declined from 1.2 billion dollars in 1992 to about 700 million dollars in 1999.

In a 91-page report, a UNDP Transition Team says that UNDP’s relationship with programme country governments and its extensive field presence “provides us with a powerful basis to support the broader international community’s efforts to make a measurable contribution to the promotion of human development and eradication of poverty.”

“Our priority must be to shift more of our staff and effort to the field to allow us to provide a set of coherent policies and services in response to the rapidly evolving needs of programme countries,” the report notes.

If the vision of a new UNDP is to be realised, says the report, the organisation must transform its people and invest more heavily in excellence and it must be tougher in assessing performance to drive out the second best.

Recent survey and assessments, however, continue to identify human resources management as a serious organisational problem. Staff morale, particularly in New York, is low.

But despite a “freeze” on recruitment, 130 core posts were filled on an adhoc basis between 1997-1999. The attrition rate for the period 1996-1998 was only two percent, which has contributed to a growing gap between tenured, older staff and a younger group frustrated by the lack of career opportunities.

“While new human resources policies have been development, their implementation and monitoring is weak.”

Performance accountability in UNDP has little or no credibility as 55 percent of staff at headquarters in the past year received performance ratings of two and above on a scale of one (best) to five (poorest).

The report also laments the fact that learning and training opportunities for staff are limited. The current learning policy calls for dedicating five percent of staff time to learning and growth, but there is little monitoring of this policy and no link between staff development plans, career management plans and performance appraisal.

UNDP currently invests 3.7 million dollars (or 1.2 percent of its total administrative budget, including development costs) in basic training.

According to the report, the new UNDP would call for a 25 percent deployment of core headquarters posts to the field. “A leaner headquarters will require review of all posts to determine what clearly belongs to headquarters, and what belongs elsewhere.”

“The current UNDP is an aging organisation that does not embrace change easily: 84 percent of the international professional staff and 80 percent of the general service staff are 40 years old and above,” the study says.

UNDP currently employs a total of 1,331 professional staff, of whom 749 are international and 582 national staff members.

In its 136 field offices, UNDP employs 577 professional staff. Additionally, there are 195 Junior Professional Officers financed directly by donors assigned to specific countries. A third category of employees, “general staff,” is comprised of 4,344 members.