01-11-2005 - Pattern of Conferences - Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations

Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations

New York

Permanent Mission address: 150 East 42 Street, Level 33, New York, New York 10017 - Telephone: 1 212 351 6600 - Fax: 1 212 351 6610

UNGA 60
Fifth Committee

Statement by Ms Jocelyn Kinnear
Adviser, Permanent Mission of Canada
on behalf of Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Item 127: Pattern of Conferences

1 November 2005

Mr. Chairman,

I have the honour today to speak on behalf of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. I would
like to thank Under-Secretary-General Chen, and the Chair of the Committee on Conferences, Mr. Simmancas, for their introductions.

Mr. Chairman,

The delegations of New Zealand, Australia and Canada welcome the progress on the reform of the Department of General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM). We have seen a number of encouraging signs, which give us hope that meaningful reforms are underway and will continue.

In particular, we welcome the progress in the development of an integrated management system, and look forward to the issuance in 2006 of the compendium of policies, practices and procedures that is being developed through consultation among the four duty stations. This will be a valuable tool to compare processes among duty stations, and to strengthen planning and coordination. We are further pleased to hear of the proactive steps that the Department has taken to assist client organisations in making more efficient and effective use of conference services.

We note, however, that the report of the Secretary-General on the reform of the DGACM does not provide information and updates on all of the measures contained in the original report on improving the performance of the Department, contained in document A/58/289. It thus does not afford a comprehensive picture of the current status of reform. In future, it would be useful for the General Assembly to receive a status report on each of the measures identified in the original report. In that regard, there are a few issues on which we would like to have further information.

First, CANZ would like to underline, in this season of management reform, that quantitative measures of efficiency and productivity are invaluable and irreplaceable tools in the management of any organisation. As such, it is of key importance that concrete tools be developed to measure efficiency and productivity in the delivery of the Department’s services. We are thus disappointed that the Secretariat appears to have abandoned its work on workload standards. While we recognise that workload standards may be an imperfect measure of efficiency and productivity, in the absence of any other means available to us, we would like to have seen the issue of workload standards addressed in the Secretary-General’s report on reform.

In a similar vein, an equally important tool for effective management is the costing of various services within an organisation’s business process. CANZ would have hoped to see further progress around developing a system to cost the business processes in the Department, as a further means to measure efficiency and productivity.

Finally, we would underline the growing role that information technology is playing and must play in the work of the constituent entities of the United Nations. This is particularly true of the work of the Department of General Assembly and Conference Management. Our delegations remain concerned about the slow progress being made in establishing a fully electronic document-processing chain to process the Department’s work.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.