It was a short week for me as I had some minor but painful health issues. I was in the office only two days although I was checking email most of the time.
We finally got an official reply from Italy regarding the unused funds from the Macedonia e-accounting project. The official communication, send by fax, does confirm that Italy wants to move the resources from the DG TTF to a trust fund in UNDESA. The funds will be used to support two or more JPOs. The fax also says that the JPOs will be allocated to UNDP. We will see.
ExO has also confirmed that UNDP will not be charing UNGIS, in spite of an initial commitment made by the Administrator at the CEB meeting in Nairobi a couple of weeks ago. We will have to assist ExO in drafting the reply. My suggestion to ExO was to decline this offer while at the same time ensuring the other UNGIS co-chairs that UNDP will be much more active and will support specific UNGIS initiatives.
Earlier today we received a package of documents from the Administrator detailing upcoming changes within UNDP. A quick read of the three documents shared did not reveal any major surprises. What is particularly interesting about them is that they do not really say much about what is going to change. Key issues such as UNDP strategic priorities and the future of the practices are indeed mentioned but we are told that this will be decided in the near future. A whole change management structure is being set up and will consist of thee groups; the Executive Group which replaces the current MG; a change and implementation team under the direction of the Associate Administrator which will operate for 6 months with staff seconded from all Bureaux and selected COs; and change teams within each Bureau that will apparently feed into the former. The one big announcement in the documents is the creation of a high-level Senior Economist Post that will be under BDP, an idea that is not new but that will be implemented for the first time.
The mission to Cairo has been postponed. Not sure when it will happen.
Cheers, Raúl
