Presumably to accommodate those completely impervious to any relocation, a new special Central Service Centre in New York is going to be considered to provide Admin, Finance, HR, ICT, Procurement and Programme support to UNICEF staff remaining in New York, whose role I thought was to provide Admin, Finance, HR, ICT, Procurement and Programme support to country offices.
Many colleagues predict that this relocation will be detrimental to continuity and team spirit, and that one shouldn’t attempt to fix what isn’t broken. I beg to differ.
UNICEF is due for a major overhaul, on many fronts.
The HQ contingent
There are about 1500 international UNICEF professionals in New York, constituting a solid one-third of all UNICEF international staff. It is not known how the headquarter contingent could grow into these dimensions, apparently unnoticed. If distributed equally, each country office would receive another 11 international professional staff. They come in addition to Regional Offices, some of which have more than 100 international professionals.Of the 6.4 billion USD expended by UNICEF in 2020, more than 2 billion USD were spent on employee benefits and consultants. There are also 0.9 billion USD for other expenses, which I suspect include travel, office space and other costs associated with those employees. Between 2016 and 2020, staff costs grew by 37 percent, which is by far the biggest increase in any expense category. Cash assistance increased by a mere 14 per cent and supplies by less than 1 per cent. All figures from the UNICEF financial report and audited financial statements, A/76/5/Add.3. The number of international staff in headquarter locations grew considerably faster than the number of international staff in country offices, by a mindnumbing 45 percent over the past five years.
One could argue that these shifts reflect a greater emphasis on technical assistance to governments. It is more likely that more staff were needed to feed a growing bureaucracy. Colleagues from across the world confirm that they rather prefer to be left alone, without HQ bugging them for information instead of offering useful advice. As one colleague wrote: “What prevents any government from going out and finding experts for a certain problem they have…? We have our noses stuck in RAM and Vision/INSIGHT and an array of dashboards – would we know a true expert if it bit us on the beak?”
The oversized overhead is not going to disappear by redistributing staff into other HQ locations, where they continue doing or omitting what they always have been doing and omitting. As the word suggests, relocation moves the problem around; it doesn’t solve it.
Thinking about it, the very idea of headquarters strikes me as outmoded. Especially if most everyone in headquarters works from home. Zoom doesn’t care where you sit. Smart people can work everywhere. To move headquarter staff closer to the country programme context (as maintained by the HQ efficiency initiative) is not going to be achieved by relocating them to Europe. Why not integrating so called HQ functions into field offices? Those who want to contribute to strategy, global policy, technical guidance, research or global communication campaigns can do so from Albania, Mozambique, Pakistan or Paraguay.
More significant change is needed
The current relocation of some headquarter divisions will occupy UNICEF’s mind and energies for a long time, reducing the appetite for the more important fundamental decisions that UNICEF still has make. Long time readers of my column know some of my points: The strategic plan is not strategic, UNICEF is oblivious to the politics of the host countries, we are losing our influence on important decisions affecting children, UN reform is messing up everyone, and so on and so forth.All of this boils down to the difference that UNICEF makes. I regularly read and try to understand, mostly in vain, UNICEF country office and regional office annual reports, and other publicly available reports. There is a conspicuous dearth of results that can plausibly be linked to UNICEF’s presence or funding, even in UNICEF’s global annual reports. We may read of thousands of children reached with a message, or millions of children attending a school that received some supplies financed by UNICEF. But we don’t know whether this made any long-lasting difference.
Every CPD contains language that the CPD is the unit of accountability, and yet we never receive an account; we never know what the money was spent for, and whether it was worth it. Is it too much to ask for a report on what several hundred million Dollar spent in one country did for the children and their families? In a language that everyone understands?
Don’t get me wrong. I am not implying that our staff are not putting in a lot of effort, or don’t know how to write. But UNICEF has lost its way in setting priorities, identifying and focusing on its comparative advantage, allocating resources, adapting itself to the reality of politics in host countries, using its authority as a UN agency, or telling a good results story. Unless some more dramatic decisions are being taken, UNICEF will remain just another regular member of the aid circus.
All staff were asked to reimagine UNICEF, and I am not sure that relocation to trendy European cities was what most had on their mind.
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More Insights from Outside the Bubble
Detlef can be contacted via detlefpalm55@gmail.com
Every country programme should be independently evaluated with regard to the difference it has made for children's rights over the time period. Wouldn't this help re accountability and learning?
ReplyDeleteThank you for your blog and the updates it brings. In 1980, when I started in UNHCR, the three big agencies - UNHCR, WFP and Unicef - had about seventy percent of the staff in field operations/programmes. Thirty percent - roughly - where support staff: admin, finance, assistants. That figure is likely exactly the opposite now. And to one of your many excellent points: who evaluates this seventy percent of the staff who love judging and evaluating the thirty percent who actually take the risks to achieve results?
ReplyDeleteBravo Detlef.. fully agree such a transition is overdue as we were getting too stale and comfortable in NY.
ReplyDeleteFrom my minority take - such changes will only succeed if we are to look into our internal business processes, policies and controls and update them to how other current nimble international organisations work. There are good models out there. These mentioned topics in our organisation are so outdated that the only way some of these were slightly adjusted was because "VISION" would not allow it.
Might as well take the opportunity to do this now as the organisation is transitioning and try adopting the new ways of working,.... or else we just had an artificial facelift with the ongoing deficiencies and outdated controls still in place.
Your analysis is razor sharp, as always. Why is it, I ask myself, that when it comes to making policy and strategic decisions, plain common sense seems to be conspicuously absent ?
ReplyDeleteWith such an array of Headquarters Locations, can one assume that the UNICEF Board will rotate it’s meeting venues between Istanbul, Florence, Valencia, Budapest, Brussels, Nairobi, Helsinki and Stockholm. Or will they do it on Zoom to save money, I wonder ?
I am struggling to see where the welfare of children is addressed – and how it will be described in terms that we lesser mortals can understand. Or has UNICEF now developed beyond children into a mega-bureaucracy ?
In sadness for kids. . . . . .
With at least 8 HQ locations and 8 regional Offices, UNICEF is becoming to look like an octopus with tentacles in many places. The problem is that with such a dispersion of senior professionals the organization is missing a focal point where a critical mass of thinking, reflection, planning and managing can be accomplished. If we add to this Copenhagen, Budapest and...???
ReplyDeleteit becomes terribly difficult for a field officer to know who and where to turn to for advice and support and yet, the prime objective of all these localities is always mentioned as being "support to the field !"
Lou Mendez et al are correct. NB: That the methodology to deal with organizational change and development is well established. It involves staff at all levels and at all offices in pointing out where there are bottlenecks (where the shoe pinches). This data then is analyzed to show what are root causes and what are merely symptoms of disfunction (or sub-optimal operations). From this one can then design interventions that deal with the issues and thus lead to more effective and efficient operations. This can also enhance job satisfaction and ensure that UNICEF continues to be well regarded as it serves its great purpose.
ReplyDeleteDetlef et al: I commend you for your persistence in trying to ensure that UNICEF remains relevant. Moving the chess pieces around is comforting to the 13th floor, as movement gives a sense of momentum -- and yet they are different. And then there is the chimera of operating systems, which we on a decadal basis adopt we have had homegrown PROMs, Off the shelf VISION and yet with all these tools, are unable to actually attribute results to many of our interventions. In part because in many countries, capacities have developed, services can be delivered by national or regional actors. Because we are now in environments, where the core-periphery gap is acute. We have stuff in our DNA that points the way: the transition of Supply Div from warehousing to become a procurement arm for some of the UN system. WFP seems to be doing it with UNHAS ( flight services at the sharp end). The current regional support structures could be beefed up, so that when C.Os need support its a SWAT team and not a lone expert, who can be swamped. While we attribute intra UN relations to HQs, in the last formulation of UN reform, it appears that our team dropped the ball, leaving the UNDP ( Archiac and predatory) to dominate the terrain.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the donors are also to blame in pushing hobby horses and foisting RBM on the system, when so many in metropolitan organizations saw through this.
In the end the politically inconvenient question: Is the ExDir always to be a U.S citizen? If so, are we getting the best that the U.S has to offer? While Jim Grant has now been, deservedly so, been held up as an ideal, today, when the world seems to have fewer folks of that stature, surely the thing to have is a robust mission and flexible systems.
Like everything, systems, not matter how clunky work because those who work within it make it work -- that has been UNICEF's secret: up and down the line, a quantum of folks at all levels who use their knowledge and gumption to make the system work.
BTW, all this exertion but is anyone listening...Regards...Samphe
ps: At the more strategic level, pity that the solutions to move the grain from the Ukraine to markets seeem not to involve the U,N system in any significant way: But here is a pipedream:
1. Sec Gen negotiates with the Ukraine and Russian Federation to see if they would be open to UN flagged ships ( Minesweepers and convoy escorts) from navies acceptable to both side -- Indian, Egyptian, Brazil and South African. Not a hint of NATO...
2. Cargo ships from countries acceptable to both sides
3. Timebound and target based...
UN gets kudos, those who need it get the grain, Ukraine gets paid and even Russia looks goodish...Win Win Win, WIn
Detlef says he begs to differ from some of us who expressed reservations about the proposed massive relocation of UNICEF HQ functions to many additional HQ hubs in different parts of the world (mostly in Istanbul and elsewhere in Europe). But unless I misunderstood grossly, his arguments seem to buttress our reservations on the wisdom of the proposed changes.
ReplyDeleteI welcome the constructive critique and many great ideas by several other colleagues - especially Samphe Lhalungpa's creative proposal for a more meaningful role in Ukraine-Russia conflict. But as he says - is anyone listening?!?
Detlef, I remember how you coached us writing Annual Reports and CPDs. It was focussed on results. Looks like that is being slowly diminishing. I am really surprised by the number of staff in NYHQ when UNICEF is known for field based organisation and so decentarlised at CO level enabling to move the resources where it is needed most. This must stay! We do not see much of our actions in war areas and raise our voice for "equity in fund raising" Ukraine vs Afaganisthan.
ReplyDeleteBijaya, many thanks for raising this, the issue is that with the kind of magpie mentality in both electorates and leaders, what captures the attention of publics is so fleeting. After the disaster of a highly botched transition, if one can even use the term to describe the utter chaos, a brief flurry of activity - the media moved on. The issues in Afghanistan are no less pressing and even more so, as a group of medieval insurgents try to graft their norms on at least an urban society that has moved on. This is why, institutional funding is so critical. Last year, I had to make a special request to an associated org to make a modest contribution for the Afghanistan effort. Do people even know that parts of the U.N have a presence in that country. We cannot enter the terrain of competing deprivations, but here we are. Kul thank you for your kind words about my ideas on moving Ukraine grain, I am staggered at the loss of policy imagination at the U.N, bleating from the sidelines is not an option. Is there not a way to release, on a conditional basis: acceptance of female education and mobility, the 5 billion that is currently with the U.S. The idea that part of this fund would support the 9/11 victims is such a major inversion of justice -- perhaps MBS should be billed for the chaos and horror visited on the city by many of his citizens!!!
ReplyDelete