Mechanic in charge of overhaul

NEW YORK

It’s easy enough for new U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to say that he wants to rebuild relations between the United Nations and its staff of 55,000, but it’s up to Alicia Barcena Ibarra to figure out how.

Ms. Barcena, a former Mexican biologist and deputy ecology minister, was chosen by Mr. Ban to head the U.N. Department of Administration and Management, the first non-U.S. official to do so in nearly a generation.

She said that running the U.N. bureaucracy is a thankless job, which oversees everything from repairing elevators to managing procurement and overseeing compliance by a dozen departments with management recommendations.

“It is sometimes frustrating, because the perception of management is that … we don’t work, we are not efficient, or even corrupt,” she said. “We need to change that.”

Her assessment is shared by a significant percentage of frustrated staff members, as well as by some members of the U.S. Congress.

The way Ms. Barcena sees it, the most important step is a complete overhaul of the U.N. internal justice system, a hopelessly slow-moving process that delays the airing of staff complaints by three years or more, plus the inevitable appeals.

Improving staff-management relations also will require better “talent management,” as she calls the process of hiring, firing and promoting. Ms. Barcena also wants to harmonize the pay offered by different U.N. agencies for similar jobs, a necessary step to coax employees out of headquarters and into more difficult foreign missions.

To expedite the yearlong process of hiring a new staff member, Ms. Barcena said, it will be necessary to scrap the much-reviled Galaxy computer system adopted in 2002 to solicit job applications and automatically sort responses. Other steps to integrate procurement management, financial tracking, personnel information and other tasks are planned but likely won’t be ready until 2009.

Slow legal system

It is the legal system that is most ripe for rebuilding, she said. The current system, highly centralized and glacially slow, costs the U.N. a fortune in fines and judgments, back pay and legal fees. Perhaps most important, the system results in frustration on all sides.

Typical grievances such as sexual harassment, nonrenewal of employment contracts and denial of promotion can take five years to resolve, although many staffers think the system is too politicized to give a fair hearing. The General Assembly agreed on Wednesday to overhaul the internal justice system, taking steps that exceed even what Mr. Ban had endorsed.

Ms. Barcena, 55, has served in various U.N. posts for eight years, working in the U.N. Environment Program, then as director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Last year, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan chose her to be his chief of staff.

Because many considered Ms. Barcena part of the “ancien regime,” her appointment by Mr. Ban to run management was met initially with exasperation and frustration.

Ethics ex-aide critical

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