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86th Session
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Report I
Report of the Director-General:
Activities of the ILO, 1996-97
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6 |
Support services |
This chapter covers the activities of several ILO programmes whose functions are mainly of an internal administrative nature, as well as others which provide services directly to constituents, such as the ILO Library, the Bureau of Public Information and the conference and meeting services. One common feature of these programmes is that the efficiency with which they are delivered and their cost-effectiveness have a significant bearing on the quality of the technical services provided by the ILO to its constituents.
The delivery of the ILO's support services during the biennium 1996-97 was characterized by a number of themes. Foremost among these was the need for the ILO to make full use of technological progress to improve the services provided to constituents. Central to the efforts made in this respect was the launching of the ILO's Internet site early in the biennium and its subsequent development in 1997. Examples of other technological developments included the introduction of an Intranet system within the ILO, electronic voting at the International Labour Conference, electronic aids for translation and document processing, and the further development of automated personnel management systems. Another theme affecting the support services, which was given special urgency by the financial uncertainty affecting the Office at the beginning of the biennium, was the need to increase the cost-effectiveness of ILO operations. A variety of techniques were adopted for this purpose, including a reorganization of conferences and meetings, a restructuring of certain major programmes and the contracting out of services, where possible and advisable. Furthermore, particularly with a view to the implementation of the active partnership policy, which requires ILO services to be brought closer to constituents, efforts continued to be made to improve staff mobility and the skill level of ILO staff, as well as increasing the proportion of women in the professional staff and rejuvenating the staff as a whole. Needless to say, not all of these objectives were pursued with the same level of success. But one area in which undoubted progress was made was the Internet.
The contents of the ILO's public Web site (http://www.ilo.org) include:
- the ILO Constitution;
- ILO Conventions, Recommendations, comments by the Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations and other related documents, through the ILOLEX database;
- the ILO's collections of national legislation, through the NATLEX database;
- the cost of social security database;
- ILO press releases and press kits and the speeches of the Director-General;
- the ILO magazine World of Work ;
- the ILO Programme and Budget, the Report on the Activities of the ILO and programming and evaluation documents;
- Governing Body documents; and
- the catalogue of ILO sales publications and information on how to order them.
These will soon be supplemented by the ILO's safety and health information database (CISDOC) and other information resources, including the full text of many of the ILO's non-sales publications, such as working papers and other studies.
The ILO and the Internet
Over the past two or three years, it has become essential for an organization such as the ILO, in which information plays such a vital role, to have its own Internet site. The fact that the ILO was not in the first wave of international organizations to create an Internet site meant that it was able to make use of their experience in structuring its electronic communications systems. The ILO Internet site came on line in March 1996. The Intranet, which consists of an internal electronic communications system to assist officials in their work at headquarters and in the field, came on line one year later, in March 1997. If the number of visitors is an indicator of success, the results have been very satisfying. From some 30,000 visits in March 1996, the first month in which the ILO Internet site was operational, the numbers rose to nearly 400,000 in June 1997 and over 800,000 in January 1998.
By December 1997, some 15 major programmes at headquarters, two Multidisciplinary Advisory Teams (San José and Budapest) and several ILO Offices, including those in San José, Madrid, Moscow and Washington, DC, had set up home pages, either on the ILO Web site or linked to it. Several other major programmes had established home pages on the Intranet. Web editors had also been appointed for most headquarters major programmes and for many ILO Offices and multidisciplinary advisory teams. There evidently remains some way to go. Too many major programmes do not yet have home pages on the ILO's site. Some of the information provided is not yet updated on a sufficiently regular basis. However, a firm basis has undoubtedly been established for bringing the whole Office on line in the biennium 1998-99.
Already the revolution in working methods is making itself felt. Several major programmes started providing certain advisory services and information resources to constituents by electronic means during the biennium. Contacts with United Nations agencies and other development partners have been facilitated. In particular, for an Organization whose staff is spread throughout the world, electronic means of communication have facilitated contacts between staff at headquarters and in the various field offices and multidisciplinary advisory teams, thereby contributing to the objective of bringing the ILO's services closer to its constituents.
A password system was introduced on the ILO's Web site to allow Governing Body members to examine the documents for forthcoming sessions of the Governing Body as soon as they are available, instead of having to wait for their delivery by traditional means. This allows earlier consultations between Governing Body members on the issues under examination. Once they have been considered by the Governing Body, these documents are then made fully accessible over the Internet, making information on ILO policies and discussions available to a much wider public than in the past.
Several ILO support programmes were active during the biennium in making their materials available through the Internet. These included the Bureau of Public Information which, in addition to press releases and press kits, has placed on the Internet the ILO magazine World of Work and important speeches by the ILO directorate, the information leaflet on the ILO and some of the ILO's collection of photographs. The readership of World of Work has expanded considerably since it became available on line, without any increase in production costs. Moreover, the Web pages for the World of Work received an award for content and presentation. The ILO's Branch Office in Washington, DC, has also set up a site designed to increase awareness of the ILO, particularly in the United States and Canada. Spanish-language sites are run by the ILO Offices in San José and Madrid, while the Moscow Office's site is in Russian.
With assistance from the ILO, cases in which constituents established or improved labour libraries and information centres included:
- the Ministry of Labour of Cuba , where the labour library was reactivated and on-line information services introduced through the Internet;
- the Ministry of Labour of El Salvador , where the labour documentation centre was re-established and on-line services and ILO information products such as CD-ROMs were introduced;
- the Employers' Federation in Mauritius , which established an information centre linked to the Internet with a trained librarian; and
- the Ministry of Labour in Nicaragua , where the social and labour documentation centre was upgraded using ILO information management products.
The Publications Bureau uses the ILO's Web site to provide a listing and short description of recent ILO publications, as well as abstracts of articles appearing in recent issues of the International Labour Review, ILO publications catalogues and an electronic form to order publications. The complete text (in English, French and Spanish) of one article from each issue of the Review is also put on line. As a result of this initiative, the number of requests received from outside researchers and publishers to cite the featured article has risen substantially and there has been an increase in the number of subscriptions to the hard copy of the Review.
The Library has made available on the ILO Web site an Internet version of the International Labour Information System (ILIS) referral system, which allows access to databases, offers search features and provides an interface in English, French and Spanish. By the end of the biennium, most of the bibliographical databases produced by the ILO had been connected to the system for Internet access. The ILO Library makes use of its experience to assist constituents in the improvement of libraries, information centres and information networks, as well as to provide training and upgrade the documentation services provided by the ILO in the field. Moreover, through the Internet, the ILO has joined the Online Computer Library Centre (OCLC), an international non-profit library cooperative with over 22,000 member libraries in more than 60 countries. The OCLC shared on-line catalogue, in which the ILO now participates, contains over 40 million records and allows the ILO to make data on its information resources available to a vast community of libraries, universities, scholars and researchers. The OCLC acts as a broker for member libraries in the purchase of information products and services at reduced rates. ILO membership of OCLC is expected to produce significant productivity gains, especially for ILO field libraries and the libraries of ILO constituents and partner institutions, due to the massive increase in the speed, quantity and availability of information, and a reduction in information processing costs through economies of scale.
Reorganization of conferences and meetings
Decisions on the organization of ILO Conferences and major regional meetings adopted by the Governing Body in November 1995 led to reductions of some $2.1 million in the budget of the ILO Conference over the biennium, and some $2.8 million in the provision for major regional meetings. The major changes included the reduction to one week of the plenary sittings of the Conference set aside for discussion of the Director-General's Report, the publication of the Provisional record after the Conference and a decrease in the duration of regional conferences to three days, with a more focused agenda to be covered entirely in plenary sitting, without any parallel committees. The Governing Body also decided that ten sectoral and five technical meetings would be held during the biennium 1996-97, as opposed to the 16 sectoral and seven technical meetings originally provided for in the Programme and Budget.
Efficiency measures in this context included the refinement and the introduction of further innovations in the electronic voting and conference computer systems, which greatly speeded up some of the procedures at the Conference. The electronic voting system was particularly valuable at the 84th (Maritime) Session of the Conference, where it facilitated the adoption of seven international labour standards and the provision of detailed results of all the votes very rapidly. The new services made available to enable delegates to follow the debate in plenary in the absence of the Provisional record included an Internet service to put the texts of speeches on line in their original language and a corresponding photocopy service.
Although there has been general understanding of the reasons underlying these efficiency measures, they have also elicited criticism. For example, the delegates at the Twelfth Asian Regional Meeting, the first regional meeting at which the new measures were applied, concluded that "Tripartite discussion at regional level is essential to the development of the ILO's programme, and with due regard to the cost implications, future Asian regional meetings should offer a longer period of discussion and full services to each of the three groups." The delegates added that "Advance circulation of views of ILO constituents can help to organize the work of the meeting more effectively." With regard to the International Labour Conference, the Governing Body decided in November 1997 to restore the publication of the Provisional record during conference sessions, starting in 1998. The effect of the other organizational measures relating to conferences and meetings will also be reviewed by the Governing Body.
Other organizational and efficiency measures
A number of other organizational and efficiency measures were adopted during the biennium. These included the reorganization of publications and document services, the extension of an evaluation system throughout the Office, the decentralization of financial operations to the regions, an improvement in the efficiency of the Staff Health Insurance Fund and several measures related to the ILO headquarters building.
The merger of all activities related to the production of documents for meetings and conferences into a single department resulted in economies of scale and greater efficiency in the management of document production and distribution. All aspects of the production process were integrated in a single management structure, within which the extensive use of computer applications and job tracking systems has led to improved production controls and a more accurate identification of resource needs. Measures were also taken to reduce the overall volume of documents produced and to reduce the distribution of documents by traditional mail. The introduction of the Internet and Intranet, together with the expansion of the ILO's computerized terminology database ILOTERM, all contributed to the increased efficiency of editorial and translation work by improving access to reference materials. New technologies continued to be explored to achieve further productivity gains and savings in these operations. Work commenced, for example, on the gradual introduction of easy-to-search electronic dictionaries, while developments were reviewed with regard to computer-assisted translation technology and voice recognition programmes for automated dictation. The more generalized use of electronic mail facilitated the implementation of a policy to increase the proportion of translation work that is contracted out, which rose by 25 per cent over the biennium, resulting in a further reduction of staff costs.
The establishment of a Publications Bureau in January 1996 marked the beginning of a new strategy and structure for the management of ILO publications, with the objective of increasing the visibility of the ILO and strengthening its image as a centre of excellence. The new structure emphasizes greater integration of editorial, production and marketing functions and strengthens the capacity of the Publications Bureau to work with the ILO's technical major programmes to improve the quality and sales potential of publications. The major ILO publication project of the biennium was the completion of the fourth edition of the Encyclopaedia of occupational health and safety (see Chapter 3 for more details). Through the ILO's licensing activities, publishers and institutions worldwide are encouraged to make available low-cost, local reprints of ILO publications and to translate and reproduce them in various forms. During the biennium, nearly 400 licensing agreements were concluded, of which over 100 were for translation (covering 29 languages).
An important element in improving the effectiveness and efficiency of ILO operations as a whole was the decision taken by the Director-General to apply the monitoring, evaluation and reporting system (MERS) developed by the ILO throughout the Office for the start of the biennium 1998-99. Already by the end of the biennium 1996-97, most new project outline documents contained reference to the ILO's monitoring, evaluation and reporting tools. Indications of the effectiveness of the MERS system include the requests for information and advice made by several other United Nations agencies and the confirmation by the South African Department of Labour that it is using MERS as a basis for developing its own programming, monitoring, evaluation and reporting system for internal management purposes. Other government departments in South Africa also requested ILO assistance in the application of the system.
In a development designed to speed up procedures related to the implementation of operational activities, preparations were made for the decentralization of financial responsibilities under the active partnership policy, to both external offices and departments at headquarters. Computer applications were developed, the Financial Rules were modified and administrative assistants were trained. Several major programmes at headquarters were due to assume responsibility for the approval of financial obligations at the beginning of 1998, while the decentralization of financial and budgetary functions to area and regional offices is expected to be completed during the course of 1998. This will enable field office directors to take control of project and office budget management, thereby eliminating current delays in obtaining approvals from headquarters to commit and spend funds. The system provides for the constant monitoring of field financial transactions.
A redistribution and modernization of work was carried out in the ILO's treasury operations to take into account a substantial reduction in general service staff resources. Progress was made towards the eventual elimination of the cash office through the rationalization of its opening hours, the development of computer systems to permit the payment of Conference and meeting staff through bank accounts and the introduction of other measures to reduce the number of payments made in cash. Progress was also made on the modernization of the payments system through the execution of payments electronically. A computer application was developed to facilitate the preparation and monitoring of contributions to the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund which, when brought into service, should result in a significant improvement in reporting to the Fund.
Cost reductions were achieved in several areas related to the administration of the headquarters building, telephone and mail rates and travel. These included savings arising out of the revision of outsourced contracts, including the contract for the headquarters building air-conditioning, heating and sanitary installations, and through a reduction in ILO staff working in this field. Savings of over 30 per cent on telephone rates were obtained through a renegotation of contracts with the Swiss PTT, while a reduction was also negotiated on the PTT contract for postage and a 25 per cent decrease in rates was obtained from the private companies used for the dispatch of special mail deliveries. A 10 per cent saving was made in relation to the biennium 1994-95 by promoting the optional use of discounted airline tickets carrying few or no restrictions.
Personnel issues
The themes underlying the implementation of personnel policy during the biennium continued to focus on the staff mobility policy and the achievement of a better balance in the staff in terms of sex and age; the provision of training to improve the skills of the staff and help them adjust to new methods of work; the adoption of measures, such as voluntary separations and redeployments, in response to the financial uncertainty at the beginning of the biennium; and the introduction of labour- and cost-saving measures for personnel management functions, including the management of personnel information and entitlements.
Efforts to ensure that staff are stationed where they can most effectively provide services to constituents, in line with the active partnership policy, resulted in a steady increase in the number of transfers between headquarters and the field. The number of such transfers rose from 47 in 1992-93, to 52 in 1994-95 and 59 in 1996-97. There has also been a steady rise in the proportion of women among professional staff, from 28 per cent in 1994, to 28.7 per cent in 1995, 29.4 per cent in 1996 and 29.7 per cent in 1997. With regard to the renewal of the staff, nearly 450 vacancies were processed during the biennium, which was almost twice the number for the biennium 1994-95. However, continued demands for the recruitment of experienced officials meant the Office was not able to increase the percentage of younger officials among professional staff. As a result, the average age of professional staff has remained constant at 46 over the past three biennia.
The introduction of new recruitment and selection procedures, on a trial basis, as well as a simplified and more equitable system of classification of posts, required lengthy negotiations with staff representatives. Work was also commenced on a review of human resource planning and career development in full consultation with the staff.
The staff training programme was significantly strengthened following the Governing Body's decision in November 1995 to increase the resources allocated to the training of the staff. An Office-wide training strategy was developed in collaboration with staff representatives. Training plans were initiated for each major programme, while the decentralization of training credits to the regions resulted in a doubling of the training funds available for field staff.
The principal features of the staff training programme during the biennium included:
- the introduction of management training programmes, attended by nearly 70 programme managers;
- the initiation of group training programmes at headquarters in 1997 in a variety of subjects, including communications and team work, the management of meetings, negotiations and project management, time management and presentation skills, in which nearly 400 officials participated;
- the implementation of regional group training programmes in Africa and Asia and the Pacific;
- an increase in the number of individual technical training programmes on various specialized subjects, with the number of beneficiaries rising from 60 in 1994-95 to over 150 in 1996-97; and
- the almost doubling of the number of beneficiaries of office automation courses during the biennium to a total of over 2,000.
With regard to the automation of many of the functions related to personnel management, the Personnel Information and Payroll System (PERSIS) has been under development for several years and is currently scheduled for completion by the end of 1999. The project is an adaptation of a system that is being developed by the United Nations (known as the Integrated Management Information System, or IMIS), in which several United Nations agencies are participating. An internal review of the project confirmed that the delays encountered in its finalization are due to problems that have arisen in the development of IMIS. The review also indicated that ILO personnel systems will not encounter any special problems related to the year 2000.
Progress was achieved in the simplification and improvement of a number of aspects of personnel management and information systems. The recruitment planning activities for regular staff and experts were merged, with the introduction of a single database, and vacancies are now advertised on the ILO's Web site. The simplification of procedures and the reorganization of the work involved led to the elimination of the backlog of compensation and insurance claims and a radical shortening of delays in the payment of claims by the Staff Health Insurance Fund. The introduction of new procedures relating to education and family allowances resulted in a reduction in the staff required for these operations. The consolidated personnel database is now updated electronically and appropriate electronic access to basic personnel data has significantly reduced the circulation of personnel files. The new components of the PERSIS system which have been introduced allow the monitoring of some personnel rules automatically, while new developments in the programme covering contract extension work have significantly increased productivity.