Summary

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has acted on eight of 12 recommendations GAO made in a June 1992 report on UNESCO management, particularly in the areas of evaluation, human resource management, and budget presentation. Beyond GAO's recommendations, UNESCO has (1) made evaluation an element of each professional's performance rating, (2) separated staff because their positions were no longer needed, and (3) improved its budget presentation. GAO has some concerns about UNESCO's oversight of the Participation Program, which funds projects and grants on a cost-sharing basis with individual member states. Overall, UNESCO's member states, Director General, managers, and employee associations have shown a commitment to management reform. This commitment will need to continue for the long term if UNESCO is to fully implement GAO's recommendations and solidify its recent management improvements.

GAO found that UNESCO: (1) has implemented or made progress on 8 of the 12 GAO recommendations; (2) has developed a decentralization policy, but it is based on administrative efficiency rather than on its international role as its governing bodies envisioned; (3) member states have not reached a consensus on how much to decentralize activities, but officials are including decentralization in their 1994 to 1995 budget; (4) has improved its program planning, evaluation, and tracking, but further improvements are necessary for the Participation Program since UNESCO lacks reliable information on it; (5) has improved its personnel system by rating employee performance, adopting a new promotion policy, reorganizing several units and eliminating positions, centralizing and improving information on its temporary staff, and implementing a flextime system; (6) is making improvements to its budget presentation as recommended by including tables comparing budgeted and actual expenditures and the impact of exchange rate fluctuations; and (7) has demonstrated a commitment to management reform by creating a deputy director general for management, giving management reform top priority, and implementing major reform initiatives.