about human and european consultancy

Back from the US. We learned a lot. The presentations were very informative and the meetings with UN and WB staff were very focused on content and possible opportunities.

At both institutions crisis management however was in the background of all meetings.

At the UN Alicia Barcena, under Secretary General of the Department of Management, stated that the UN is healing from the damage of the past fraude and corruption in procurement practices and has put a lot of effort in improving procedures and increasing transparancy.
That there is still a long way to go at some of the UN agencies to meet the procurement standards we are used to from the European Commission (cumbersome but relatively transparant) was prooved when my collegue asked a question to a UNDP procurement officer why they did not publicise the weight of the separate selection criteria in tender procedures. His answer was that ‘the financial rules of the UN’ did not allow that. It was a relief that one of the next spekers, from UNOPS, informed us that they in fact do publicise the weight of the selection criteria.

While the UN seems to recover from a crisis, we found the Worldbank in the middle of one. Talk between meetings and among staff in corridors was focussed on their President Paul Wolfowitz and how long he would still be in position. Bank staff have been distributing blue ribbons as a symbol for their ‘continuous struggle for improved governance in the Worldbank Group’, but defacto demanding the resignation of Mr Wolfowitz. Also higher officials were wearing it. One staff member recommended us to look at the website worldbankpresident.org if we needed updating on news and rumours. Difficulty seems to be the voting in the Board, where the US has already 19% of the votes themselves and developing countries are in a dependent position. Procedures to handle a case like this happen to be unclear as well.