United Nations

The Secretary General of the United Nations reported in 1997 that the organization had become fragmented, duplicative, and ineffective in some areas--risking becoming irrelevant if it did not more effectively carry outs its mission. Since then, the U.N. has substantially restructured its leadership and operations and has partly implemented a performance-oriented human capital system. However, the U.N. is still considering initiatives that would focus its programs and budgeting on managing the Secretariat's performance. Thus, the goal of creating an organization with a results and continuous improvement orientation has yet to be achieved and will require continued advocacy by the United States and other member states.

GAO noted that: (1) the U.N. has substantially restructured its leadership and operations and partly implemented a performance-oriented human capital system; (2) however, the U.N. is still considering initiatives that would focus its program and budgeting on managing the Secretariat's performance; (3) thus, the goal of creating an organization with a results and continuous improvement orientation has not yet been achieved and will require continued advocacy by the United States and other member states; (4) U.N. reform is an interrelated program and requires that all core elements be in place to succeed; (5) initiatives to restructure the organization are substantially in place and have provided more cohesive leadership for the U.N.; (6) in sharp contrast with the past, where senior managers and program heads operated with great autonomy, the organization is now structured to integrate their efforts; (7) as a result, the U.N. conducts more coordinated and thorough planning for peacekeeping operations and integrates human rights considerations into all U.N. programs; (8) however, these initiatives have not fully penetrated to the working and field levels of the organization; (9) moreover, the initiatives do not address all organizational issues, such as the capacity of the U.N. to undertake the scale of its current peacekeeping responsibilities; (10) the Secretariat is also putting in place a performance-oriented human capital system; (11) for example, it has fully implemented a merit-based appraisal system that ties staff expectations and ratings to results in achieving U.N. goals; (12) nonetheless, the Secretariat's performance cannot be systematically assessed because the General Assembly has not yet adopted initiatives to focus and clarify the Secretariat's work objectives or approved performance-oriented budgeting; (13) the General Assembly is still considering these proposals and is reviewing a draft of the U.N.'s primary planning document, which includes performance indicators for all programs; and (14) the Secretariat also has not developed a system to monitor and evaluate program results and impact.

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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