Identifying Marginal Activities Could Help Control Growing U.N. Costs

GAO reported on the efforts of the Secretary General of the United Nations (U.N.) to reduce U.N. costs by identifying marginal and ineffective activities. The review was undertaken because Congress is concerned about the growing U.N. budget and the corresponding U.S. contribution. Member countries believe that the real growth of the U.N. budget can be lowered by shifting resources from obsolete, marginal, and ineffective activities to new activities. Every year, the Secretary General identifies more marginal activities to be terminated; however, he still has not identified enough to have much effect on the budget.

The Secretary General has asked program managers to determine if any of their activities are of marginal value. GAO believes that not many activities have been identified as marginal because program managers are unable to objectively evaluate their own activities. In a recent study, the U.N. Joint Inspection Unit also concluded that a main reason for the unsatisfactory response is the reliance on program managers to identify marginal activities. Unit inspectors believe that, to make the identification process meaningful, more decisive efforts are needed. It suggested establishing a monitoring unit in the Secretariat that would have the authority to terminate activities. The unit also suggested establishing groups outside the Secretariat to analyze U.N. operations. GAO agreed that there may be a need to adopt alternative identification approaches and believes that the unit's suggestions provide a basis for pursuing such approaches. GAO believes that existing U.N. programming, financial, audit, and evaluation groups can satisfy these needs without additional costs.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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