Yesterday, I attended the first formal meeting of the Information Disclosure Oversight Panel which is being supported by BRSP/Civil Society unit. The information disclosure policy of UNDP was approved by the EB back in 1997, after extensive discussions and reviews both within UNDP and external partners. The document is buried somewhere deep in the UNDP site (http://www.undp.org/cso/pdf/pubinf_dispol.pdf) and needs updating as some of the divisions, procedures and documents referenced in the original have changed or been eliminated all together. Part of the meeting was spenf on this and a reviseds document will be sent to MMB by the end of the month.
The panel and its secretariat (run by BRSP) spent most of the meeting working on a series of recommendations that will be forward to the Administrator for the implementation of the policy at the country level. An implementation working group, separate from the oversight panel, is supposed to be created by UNDP to ensure the policy is consistently implemented and enforced at all levels. The work of the panel is indirectly connected to this group; however, the core work of the panel is to provide support with grievances and arbitration and not so much with its actual implementation. This is a role for UNDP and it it connected to the ongoing corporate UNDP ICT strategies on portal development, ERP deployment, etc..
The panel also elected two co-chairs: one from civil society, Chad Dobson, and one from UNDP, Raul Zambrano (hmmm!) and agreed to meet again tentatively in June.
Ra�l
