RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE STRATEGIC PLAN FOR MANAGEMENT MODERNIZATION

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1 OAS maintains and strengthens results-based management Strengthen the Project Evaluation Committee Require programme areas to monitor and close dormant project accounts Dec 2014 None DPE Admin Memo Dec 2014 None DPE Dec 2014 None DFAMS Directive The pilot for the application of performance measurement capabilities in 1-2 departments has been deferred while DPE launches the new administration s initiatives geared to the improvement of the Organization s performance measurement capabilities. These initiatives are: 1. Strategic Planning Exercise: estimated to have delivered a first draft by the end of. 2. Process Mapping: estimated to have produced an inventory and maps/models of main operative processes (approx. 20%) by the end of the second quarter These maps/models will be the basis for eventual redesign. 3. Balanced Scorecard: estimated to have DPE s staff trained as well as a first draft exercise at Tier 1 Level by the end of. A revised executive order clarifying and strengthening the role of the PEC has been drafted and is under review by the new administration. In 2014, DFAMS closed over 250 dormant accounts, clearing approximately $275 thousand. During the 1 st semester of SAF released Administrative memorandum No. 125 updating the rules and procedures regarding handling Specific Funds. Among the updated rules and procedures is included a section pertaining to unspent balances, detailing procedures to cleanup these balances less than $5,000. DFAMS has continued this effort and has identified to close approximately 100 expired and/or dormant accounts, amounting to approximately $135 thousand of which $85 thousand has already been closed. DFAMS regularly requests programme areas to review and close dormant accounts. 1

2 Require programme areas to report on the reasons for their dormant project accounts Continue practice of proactive disclosure (accountability tab) Increase the parking fees to market rates effective January Continue and increase rental of available facilities to maximize revenues Dec 2014 None DFAMS Directive Dec 2014 Dec 2014 Dec 2014 None Revenue generating Revenue generating DGS Admin Memo 83 DGS Covenant with Bank of America Administrative Memo 68 Rev.2 DFAMS has reported and contacted some donors to consolidate and reprogrammed if possible many of these dormant accounts. However, given that the technical areas have a more direct relationship with donors, DFAMS will prepare and send communications to the areas requesting to contact donors to either return dormant funds over $5,000 to the donors or request the consolidation or reprogramming of these funds. Since March, DFAMS is publishing statutory financial statements and supplemental information for all OAS Funds in the Accountability Tab of the OAS website, including latest quota payment information and liquidity status of the Regular Fund. DFAMS is publishing Quarterly Reports (QFR) which includes expanded analyses on key financial developments and management concerns on the financial situation of the OAS. QFRs are being published at least 20 days earlier than the general Quarterly Resource Management and Performance Report presented to CAAP. information on the Accountability Tab is updated daily (e.g. quotas), monthly or quarterly as the case may require based on statutory financial requirements. DGS has received a proposal from our broker CBRE to rent for 10 years 7,920 square feet to Mental Health Americas, an NGO. DGS continues renting space, such as the Hall of the America, for special events. 2

3 Review and update the 2007 policy on workplace harassment Review and update the harassment recourse mechanisms Gather all the ethics and conflict of interest guidelines and regulations into a single document Provide this document to all new staff and to all staff attending orientation training Dec 2014 Cost SAF Dec 2014 Cost SAF See 31.1 Dec 2014 None DLS Dec 2014 Cost SAF The SG has formed a Task Force led by the Secretary of SAF to review and update the OAS policy and practice with respect to prevention and mitigation of workplace and sexual harassment. The Task Force has met five times and is making steady progress. The new policy guidelines have been agreed by the Task Force. Work continues of a proposed new mechanism to deal with harassment cases in the OAS. See The Task force has a broad mandate to look at all aspects of ethics training and practice in the OAS. Our intention is to move to a practice whereby all staff members and non-staff personnel who have a contractual relationship with the GS/OAS must participate in training to raise awareness regarding ethics. The GS/OAS will provide orientation training to new staff, awareness-raising training to all staff, and targeted training for Managers and Supervisors, completion of which will be a requirement for advancement to successive levels of responsibility. Specific training should be provided to officials involved in harassment claims processes. These training programs will provide tools to identify, understand, and deal constructively with all ethics issues including conflict of interest and prohibited conduct 3

4 30.3 Provide a half-day Ethics at the OAS session to all staff Dec 2014 Cost SAF A half-day session: Ethics at the OAS will be held at the GS/OAS to offer all staff the opportunity to participate and address queries. This session will provide clarification and guidance on the policy, and on the relevant guidelines and processes. It will raise awareness of the OAS zero tolerance of prohibited conduct, and it will communicate information regarding all ethics principles (e.g. respect and dignity, equal and non-discriminatory treatment, harassment-free environment, confidentiality, etc.) emphasizing the fact that any form of prohibited conduct is unacceptable and will not be tolerated Secretary of SAF to determine ICR allocations from onwards Consolidate the rules under the SG authority and consider simplification into one document Modify EO such that Project Evaluation Committee becomes the Internal Evaluation Committee DPE to draft an evaluation policy and guidelines for approval by the PEC In, evaluate Scholarship program, and do a Jan -GA None SAF Jan -GA None DLS/SG Jan -GA None DLS/DPE The determination of ICR allocation is performed in the formulation process of the OAS program-budget. This responsibility falls under DPE, which does not report to SAF as per the latest Executive Order. This recommendation should be modified to reflect that. A revised executive order for the PEC, to better reflect and strengthen its current role has been drafted. Jan -GA None DLS/DPE Executive Order Evaluation guidelines are in draft stage. Jan -GA Cost DPE Admin Memo While an estimate for the evaluation of the scholarship program was provided, no resources for the evaluation of 4

5 participatory assessment of MS committees the program or for the participatory assessment have been designated Provide full cost information on translation and clarify translation needs for working documents Issue an Administrative Memorandum to better define Direct Costs in Specific Fund projects After a transition period, remove rental waiver afforded to organizations using OAS premises Strengthen external fund resource mobilization. Systematic promotion campaign with Specific Fund donors, and through social media SG to issue directive on the appropriate number of OAS staff attending meetings outside DC Inventory then revoke all existing exceptions to the staff rules Consider all new requests (including renewals) through Jan -GA None DCM Jan -GA None DFAMS Admin Memo Jan -GA Jan -GA Revenue generating None DGS Jan -GA None SER Jan -GA Jan -GA Jan -GA Revenue generating None None SG DFAMS will prepare guidelines regarding the inclusion of certain direct costs that are currently considered indirect costs (e.g., office space and common costs of personnel and CPRs working on that project) into project budgets. 5

6 Senior Advisory Committee and disclose 48.1 Consider a strategic partnership with the planned Smithsonian American Latino Museum Consider a valuation of the artwork owned by the OAS Jan -GA None Museum 48.2 Jan -GA Cost Museum In the last three years, steps have been taken to create efficiencies and reduce paper usage by creating On-Line Tools. To name a few, in the year 2012 the Result Based Contracting System was implemented. This system created fully integrated electronic records for contracting purposes. These records created electronic POs in the financial system and eliminated the need to produce printed outputs. Other initiatives to digitize and streamline processing of documents include the of the Leave Management System and the Travel Expense Claim System in 2013, and the Common Costs System in. All these systems were aimed at creating efficiencies and facilitate the production and storage of electronic records. In addition to allowing for faster interaction with the end user, these online tools significantly reduce the amount of paper and create a simplified process to store and retrieve electronic records, and to produce electronic reports. Furthermore, DOITS is currently working with the of Procurement to review different business processes and digitalize records where possible. As part of 49.2 Vigorously digitize paper documents Jan -GA Cost DFAMS/DP/ DHR/DOITS 6

7 50.4 Upgrade the offsite backup and disaster recovery mechanism Jan -GA Cost DOITS this effort, DP has successfully digitalized 90% of all the printed purchase orders processed during the year and expects to be fully digital before the second half of. These records accounted for more than 500,000 printed documents. Disaster Recovery In an effort to comply with this recommendation, on November 7 th, 2014, DOITS began the (backup and disaster recovery mechanism) of the Disaster recovery Standby Server of OASES and it was successfully completed and operational on November 10 th, Since then the GS/OAS financial system OASES has a full offsite standby recovery system that in approximately 4 hours can restore OASES operations in the event of a disaster. Moreover, on April 12 th,, for the first time since OASES, DFAMS and DOITS successfully ran a Full-Interruption Disaster Recovery Testing of OASES to perform critical financial testing scenarios. The testing period concluded satisfactory, the corresponding Recovery Objective (RTO) was set to a maximum of 4 hours and the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) was set to tolerate data loss to a maximum of 1 hour or a current redo log (80MB) in size. Backups/Upgrades In order to become more prepared for a prompt disaster recovery, during the last semester, DOITS replaced obsolete infrastructure used for backup software and storage for the backup of all Organizational Data ( , documents, applications, website contents and OASES). The new hardware/software responds to challenges of 7

8 51.1 Develop an Information Management Policy Jan -GA None Admin Memo ever increasing storage needs, delivers high levels of performance and operational efficiency, complies with the latest stringent security standards and simplifies data management for backups and virtualization aligned to DR. During the last couple of years, DOITS and DP have been actively working on a thorough review of the Procure to Pay Cycle. Special emphasis has been given to simplification, automation and transparency as they are key to increase our efficiency and accountability. The benefits of automation expand to other areas within SAF. The DP and DOITS are currently working to identify several business processes that may be automated or processed differently. In addition, and within the same scope DP and DOITS are currently working to fully integrate and automate all SG/OAS travel procedures. Among other benefits, this solution will drastically simplify the process, minimize human intervention and error, it will reduce turnaround time and it will remove unnecessary workload by creating automatic POs for of thousands of travel transactions. This automated travel obligation system will also automate and streamline a series of administrative processes ranging from calling, negotiating, entering, reconciling and approving travel at the OAS to a more robust on-line system where digitizing paper documents and agile response to travel demands is a must. Other initiatives related to the business process re-engineering and 58 Advances: business process re-engineering Jan -GA None DOITS 8

9 Create a Senior Advisory Committee to make recommendations to SG on all rule exceptions The SG should disclose his/her use of discretionary authority to Member States General Secretariat develop a framework and guidelines governing systematic staff meetings Conduct periodic Staff Engagement surveys before the GA in 2016, 2018 and 2020 Create a formal Staff- Management Consultative Committee General Secretariat to provide biennial executive orientation seminar to Member States Jan -GA None SG Jan -GA None SG Jan -GA Cost DHR Jan -GA Cost DHR Jan -GA None DHR Jan -GA Cost DHR developed for other areas within SAF, include the RBCS (contracting), the TECS (travel expense reporting) and the CCOST (common cost allocation) systems. On June 1 the Secretary General invited all staff to a town hall meeting as a follow-up to the online consultation fora that took place during the transition and which were intended to get the views from the staff and enrich the strategic approach and related initiatives put forward by the SG. The SG has committed to continue holding regular town hall meetings with the staff. In conjunction with the Staff Committee, the SG s office has completed a survey in the form of online consultation fora on topics of interest to the organization and the staff members in which all OAS personnel were invited to participate. The Secretary of SAF and DHR representatives have met with the Staff Committee to discuss issues and concerns facing the staff. Representatives of SAF will continue to have periodic meetings with the Staff Committee to address pending matters that may arise. Once the CAAP is reconvened, it will be consulted on the most effective means of implementing this recommendation. 9