What to do la is an occasional musing on what one former staff member has and hasn’t done and been thinking about since leaving UNICEF. This week – Paperwork?
Paperwork used to be an important part of our work in UNICEF. You will probably remember the planning documents, the CPD, the CPMP, the OMP, the AWPs, HACT, the SMAC (ok that one I made up) and all the supporting documents that went into those.
You will also probably remember some of the acronyms, that seemed to be invented to help us be able to manage this “mountain” of paper.
The mountain of paper analogy was made clear to me very early in my time with UNICEF. I was a very impressionable new UNICEF staff member, on mission to the ROSA Office in Kathmandu when Nigel Fisher was Regional Director and David Parker was the Regional Planning Officer. Nigel and David had put together all the paperwork required to develop a single Country Programme Document and the pile on Nigel’s desk was at least a foot high.
As I said, paperwork in UNICEF seemed to be a big part of our work back in the day. I am sure, with all the wonderful technology, A.I. and re-engineered processes and systems that UNICEF is undoubtedly now using and implementing, that staff time is now almost exclusively focused on being catalysts for change for children.
I was reminded of paperwork recently when I was back in one of the countries where I used to work. I was helping my son and his family buy a new car. I have been living in New Zealand since retiring five or so years ago now and have gotten used to a reasonably paperless existence. When we bought a car here, we chose it, showed our drivers licences, paid the money for the car, registration and insurance and that was pretty much it. All we needed was the money to buy the car and our driving licences to prove we could drive it home.
Not so in my former duty station. While the pile of paperwork required to buy and insure a car was not quite at the epic proportions of Nigel Fisher’s mountain of paper required for a UNICEF Country Programme Document in the 1990s, it was still pretty impressive! And then most of that paperwork needed to be copied, certified and submitted to three different offices.
And yes this process was “helped” by “digitisation” in that documents could be scanned and then sent by email or downloaded to a website. So that was good, I didn’t actually have to visit three or four different offices.
I am not complaining about or criticising a particular country’s way of doing things. I am though wondering whether, as we increasingly use online tools and dispense with paper whether this is actually fundamentally changing the way we do things, or are we just doing the same things the same way but online.
A great example of this was when I was opening a new Bank account in my former duty station. I already had an account with this bank, so they had all my details including vertified copies of Passports, visas utility bills etc. But I needed to open a different type of account to facilitate some regular payments.
I was delighted to see on my bank’s website and App that I could do this online. So, being thousands of miles away in New Zealand I went to the website to open my new account. I expected I would need to fill some online forms and then quickly realised that the online forms were actually forms that I needed to download, print out, complete in my own handwriting, scan and send back.
Then I received an email back from the ban asking to arrange for a video call, which I set up with them. During this call I had to hold up to the camera the forms that I had filled out and sent to them. I also needed to hold up my passport to the camera along with some utility bills. Online banking!
I have been away from UNICEF for a few years so am not quite so upto date with how things are now being done in UNICEF Offices. I wonder though about Nigel Fisher’s pile of papers for a new CPD all those years ago and what the equivalent is today, in megabytes (or gigabytes, or terabytes, or …?)
I do hope that UNICEF is doing, or trying to do, things very differently - not just moving the pieces around or scanning the paperwork! The rapid and ongoing reorganisation of the Post World War 2 global order demands it. Those that fought against the will of the United States and others to ensure UNICEF continued beyond its initial emergency role in the early 1950s expect it , and (if I may assume to note on their behalf) the children of today and tomorrow demand it.
More musings to come so please look out for - What to do la #8 – History!
You will also probably remember some of the acronyms, that seemed to be invented to help us be able to manage this “mountain” of paper.
The mountain of paper analogy was made clear to me very early in my time with UNICEF. I was a very impressionable new UNICEF staff member, on mission to the ROSA Office in Kathmandu when Nigel Fisher was Regional Director and David Parker was the Regional Planning Officer. Nigel and David had put together all the paperwork required to develop a single Country Programme Document and the pile on Nigel’s desk was at least a foot high.
As I said, paperwork in UNICEF seemed to be a big part of our work back in the day. I am sure, with all the wonderful technology, A.I. and re-engineered processes and systems that UNICEF is undoubtedly now using and implementing, that staff time is now almost exclusively focused on being catalysts for change for children.
I was reminded of paperwork recently when I was back in one of the countries where I used to work. I was helping my son and his family buy a new car. I have been living in New Zealand since retiring five or so years ago now and have gotten used to a reasonably paperless existence. When we bought a car here, we chose it, showed our drivers licences, paid the money for the car, registration and insurance and that was pretty much it. All we needed was the money to buy the car and our driving licences to prove we could drive it home.
Not so in my former duty station. While the pile of paperwork required to buy and insure a car was not quite at the epic proportions of Nigel Fisher’s mountain of paper required for a UNICEF Country Programme Document in the 1990s, it was still pretty impressive! And then most of that paperwork needed to be copied, certified and submitted to three different offices.
And yes this process was “helped” by “digitisation” in that documents could be scanned and then sent by email or downloaded to a website. So that was good, I didn’t actually have to visit three or four different offices.
I am not complaining about or criticising a particular country’s way of doing things. I am though wondering whether, as we increasingly use online tools and dispense with paper whether this is actually fundamentally changing the way we do things, or are we just doing the same things the same way but online.
A great example of this was when I was opening a new Bank account in my former duty station. I already had an account with this bank, so they had all my details including vertified copies of Passports, visas utility bills etc. But I needed to open a different type of account to facilitate some regular payments.
I was delighted to see on my bank’s website and App that I could do this online. So, being thousands of miles away in New Zealand I went to the website to open my new account. I expected I would need to fill some online forms and then quickly realised that the online forms were actually forms that I needed to download, print out, complete in my own handwriting, scan and send back.
Then I received an email back from the ban asking to arrange for a video call, which I set up with them. During this call I had to hold up to the camera the forms that I had filled out and sent to them. I also needed to hold up my passport to the camera along with some utility bills. Online banking!
I have been away from UNICEF for a few years so am not quite so upto date with how things are now being done in UNICEF Offices. I wonder though about Nigel Fisher’s pile of papers for a new CPD all those years ago and what the equivalent is today, in megabytes (or gigabytes, or terabytes, or …?)
I do hope that UNICEF is doing, or trying to do, things very differently - not just moving the pieces around or scanning the paperwork! The rapid and ongoing reorganisation of the Post World War 2 global order demands it. Those that fought against the will of the United States and others to ensure UNICEF continued beyond its initial emergency role in the early 1950s expect it , and (if I may assume to note on their behalf) the children of today and tomorrow demand it.
More musings to come so please look out for - What to do la #8 – History!
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