Fox Exclusive:UN’s Procurement Business is Managerial Disaster, Report Reveals
The United Nations’ $10 billion procurement business-the buying of goods and services for its operations worldwide-is a managerial disaster, in which its own procedures are not followed, documentation is often missing and the total amount spent on consultants is unknown, according to a damning report now being quietly circulated at the world body. oreover, the U.N.’s top managers have apparently been failing to meet requests from the U.N. General Assembly to fix the situation since at least 2001.The conclusions appear in a sharply-worded, 40-page note to the U.N.’s top managers that was delivered in early December. The note, obtained by FOX News, appears to confirm a dismal portrait of the U.N.’s major money-spending activities that the organization has often vehemently denied.The inspectors who prepared the latest management report work for a specialized, Geneva-based watchdog of the world organization known as the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU). The JIU’s job is to assess and improve the efficiency and coordination of the U.N. worldwide through its inspection and recommendation process.Its prescriptions for improving management, however, only have the force of recommendations —and in this case, the inspectors note, they made some of the same suggestions as far back as 1999, with little apparent effect.The new document bears the numbing title of “Corporate Consultancies in United Nations System Organizations,” and for its first 13 pages is mainly a highly-critical examination of U.N. usage of consultants for such things as information management, management restructuring and internal analysis.When it comes to hiring consultants, the inspectors also find the U.N. as a whole badly wanting — starting with the fact that, as the report notes, “in the United Nations system, there is no definition of corporate consultancy,” and the organization apparently doesn’t even know how much money it is spending on the service.Only 15 of the U.N.’s roughly 35 funds, programs and agencies, plus the U.N. Secretariat, provided[…]