Procurement and contract management for peacekeeping operations

In 2004, UNOPS reorganized its client service and procurement operations.

The organizations with highly decentralized procurement operations in over 100 different locations, such as UNDP and UNICEF, not included in the table, would logically have more procurement staff overall than organizations with mostly centralized operations.

The Procurement Service is working together with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to improve the skills and capacity of the peacekeeping missions in procurement and contract management.

UNDP currently encourages procurement from those countries by decentralizing procurement operations to its field offices, especially for in country and in region procurement supportive of direct execution and national execution modalities implemented mostly through these offices.

In New Zealand, for example, heads of procuring entities are free to manage their departments' procurement operations.

(x) Report of the Secretary General on procurement and contract management for peacekeeping operations (A 58 761)

(y) Report of the Secretary General on procurement and contract management for peacekeeping operations (A 59 688)

To facilitate data exchange between Headquarters and the peacekeeping missions, the Procurement Service has been working with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to develop a common procurement management system.

UNOPS reorganized its client service and procurement operations and decentralized staff out of New York into regional structures.

However, ITU outsourced as much as 58.7 per cent of its 2002 procurement operations to the private sector and ILO did likewise for 8 per cent of its total procurement.

While the application of ICT systems to the procurement process should certainly bring multiple benefits as summarized above, the organizations also have a mandate to strengthen public procurement capacities in the recipient countries so as to enable them to perform direct procurement operations.

Thus, enhancing expertise within the organizations in e procurement systems and operations should equip procurement officials with additional knowledge and skills needed to boost similar capacities in the recipient countries, as explained below.

The executive heads of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), ITU and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) should bring their separate specialized procurement units under a single system of accountability for procurement operations, in particular in the case of relatively low procurement volumes (para.

9. Also requests the Secretary General to ensure that, on matters relating to procurement in the field, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations follows the principles of objectivity and impartiality while advising the Procurement Division

(d) Streamlined procurement procedures for peacekeeping operations in the field, including specific information on mechanisms for strengthened monitoring, oversight and accountability

Audits of the UNHCR emergency operations in Burundi, Chad and the Sudan identified a need to improve procurement and general management.

The Information Technology Operations Unit has also established enhanced disaster recovery services and absorbed an increased workload in procurement and training activities.

While these endeavours have significantly improved the procurement operations of the United Nations, the reforms were mostly confined to the United Nations.

There exists an Inter Agency Procurement Group for sharing information on suppliers and for implementing the Lead Agency Concept, which however does not seek to streamline and pool procurement operations under a single chain of authority.

In supply operations in 2004, the value of UNICEF global procurement amounted to 802 million (excluding freight), a 15 per cent increase over 2003.

Considering the amounts involved, the systems and procedures adopted in some operations to initiate, manage and control procurement activities were ineffective, and sometimes deficient.

Aside from the multilingual policies of some organizations, having procurement manuals in the three working languages of the organizations is an important practical requirement in cases of decentralized procurement operations, in particular the United Nations and its funds and programmes.

The same Senior Legal Officer visited the Sudan in December 2004 to assist the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Procurement Service in contract negotiations.

As these operations stabilize over the medium to long term, the volume of procurement is likely to remain more or less constant or to decline.

To ensure that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations submits the consolidated acquisition plan to the Procurement Service by 1 June of each financial year, the Department has an internal goal of submitting all acquisition plans to the Procurement Service by 15 May.

While these measures to some extent helped streamline procurement operations at United Nations Headquarters, they are, however, still to percolate down to other major duty stations, including field offices, and to the collective membership of the Inter Agency Procurement Working Group (IAPWG).

This means that with the exception of IAPSO which carries out procurement activities for a diversified constituency of clients including non governmental and civil society organizations, procurement operations of the organizations are essentially geared towards their own administrative and field programme requirements, and this commonality should in principle justify a move towards ever more integrated procurement policies and services.

Requests the Secretary General to ensure that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations communicates the information on vendor performance to all aviation offices involved, including the Procurement Service.

The question therefore is how to best balance the policy principle of equitable geographical distribution of supply sources against the requirement of more cost effective procurement operations.

Requests the Secretary General to ensure that the Department of Peacekeeping Operations communicates the information on vendor performance to all aviation offices involved and the Procurement Service.

It is also responsible for the provision of procurement services required for buildings management of the VIC, the VIC catering operations and execution of the asbestos removal project.

After the summer recess period, the Commercial Operations Unit will meet with the respective directors and senior managers to institute regular procurement meetings designed to produce workload forecasts.

The Commercial Operations Unit is designing a procedure to advertise all its procurement activities on the home page and to make the vendor community aware of the process.

This trend seems to reflect increased procurement activities by United Nations entities in response to expanding peacekeeping and humanitarian operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, among others.

Having considered the reports of the Secretary General on procurement and contract management for peacekeeping operations, and the related report of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions,

Indeed, UNDP has over the years subsidized IAPSO's operations (up to 2001) and has been its most important client, accounting in 2002 for 35 per cent of its procurement volume.

Procurement

Procurement

Procurement

Requests the Secretary General, in order to improve the transparency and efficiency of procurement in peacekeeping operations, to ensure implementation of and compliance with the mechanisms aimed at facilitating the compilation by all missions of assessment of progress and final performance of vendors and its immediate transmission to the Procurement Service at Headquarters

The Procurement Working Group failed to explore the option of merging all the procurement services at Headquarters into a single entity for various reasons cited by the organizations as obstacles to common services, and concerning each organization's corporate identity, specialized operations, or procedural differences specific to their business processes and accountability systems.

At UNDP, procurement staff also receives training on legal aspects of procurement.

Requests the Secretary General, in order to improve the transparency and efficiency of procurement in peacekeeping operations, to ensure implementation of and compliance with the mechanisms aimed at facilitating the compilation by all missions of an assessment of progress and final performance of vendors and its immediate transmission to the Procurement Service at Headquarters

Procurement management