Working in the UNDP Country Office, Bangladesh, so far, has been interesting. Writing this little piece makes me feel like a traitorous undercover spy documenting every secret of this creature. Sure, all that we’ve heard about the UN is partly true: yes, it’s a big bureaucracy, and it’s a big bulky animal. Things could move at a snail’s pace when it goes through mountains of paper work, and passes through different layers of the machinery. But the most heartbreaking thing one could discover is the level of inefficiency that exists. The department I work for, Results and Resource Management Cluster, does monitoring and evaluation of some of the biggest UNDP development projects in Asia, and the world. I was indeed amazed by the amount and quality of donors and partners Bangladesh has for its development challenges, including the World Bank, which, I heard, hardly extends loans and aids to third parties other than national governments.
Anyways, our team’s profile includes conducting quality and impact assessment. My first assignment was conducting a quality assessment of a project report. It was sort of amusing to learn that the report was prepared in a mere 10 day period, by an external consultant. The project neither had a preliminary data collection plan, nor a system of properly recording the relevant statistics in place. And here it was a $35 million project with a delivery period of over 3 years. Needless to mention the report was a complete disappointment. Anybody with a decent general knowledge of project management could have written it without even setting foot in the country. One of the recommendations read: Enhance partnership between the implementing agencies and the local government.
This morning we read another project financial report: well, the basic breakdown of this project was that 50% of its total project endowment went as operating cost, with only the other half actually reaching the beneficiaries. Come lunch and I learned that WFP gives 2 kilos of rice for a day of hard labor—now consider this: 1 kilo of rice gives no more than 4000 calories.
I’ve rationalized that although it is puzzling the experience nevertheless has important utility for me. In any case, here is one warning I can give you that deserves your attention: 1.54% of all UN workforce were estimated to have AIDS in 2005, and probably the number is multiplying. “If the UN were one country, it would be facing a generalized epidemic.” What is the subtext here? Be extra safe when you hangout with someone from the UN. The probability of undercover spies becoming a target of the systemic internal defense mechanism goes up. Sorry for being crude.
Anyways, our team’s profile includes conducting quality and impact assessment. My first assignment was conducting a quality assessment of a project report. It was sort of amusing to learn that the report was prepared in a mere 10 day period, by an external consultant. The project neither had a preliminary data collection plan, nor a system of properly recording the relevant statistics in place. And here it was a $35 million project with a delivery period of over 3 years. Needless to mention the report was a complete disappointment. Anybody with a decent general knowledge of project management could have written it without even setting foot in the country. One of the recommendations read: Enhance partnership between the implementing agencies and the local government.
This morning we read another project financial report: well, the basic breakdown of this project was that 50% of its total project endowment went as operating cost, with only the other half actually reaching the beneficiaries. Come lunch and I learned that WFP gives 2 kilos of rice for a day of hard labor—now consider this: 1 kilo of rice gives no more than 4000 calories.
I’ve rationalized that although it is puzzling the experience nevertheless has important utility for me. In any case, here is one warning I can give you that deserves your attention: 1.54% of all UN workforce were estimated to have AIDS in 2005, and probably the number is multiplying. “If the UN were one country, it would be facing a generalized epidemic.” What is the subtext here? Be extra safe when you hangout with someone from the UN. The probability of undercover spies becoming a target of the systemic internal defense mechanism goes up. Sorry for being crude.
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