UN System Statistics

OVERVIEW

The CEB Secretariat is mandated to collect statistics on behalf of its member organizations. Data collected each year go further to provide a picture of the United Nations system's human resources and financial and budgetary situation: they include financial, human resources, and procurement statistics. The Data Management Platform (DMP) aims to optimize the integrity of data gathered by CEB Secretariat on behalf of the United Nations system and to provide specifications for its enhanced presentation. The platform supports the CEB Secretariat and in particular, the HLCM Secretariat, in the pursuit of reliable statistical reports and derived applications.

The CEB Secretariat maintains a shared data management system allowing member agencies to upload tabular documents within the context of a simple data collection and reporting workflow. The former upload system, developed in 2003, at that point outdated and non-scalable, was recently revamped, resulting in the new Data Management Platform, with a modern infrastructure and adherence to governance, privacy and security features as from UN-OICT policies.

The DMP offers a range of features that spans a wide functional area, and includes survey configuration, validation, integration with third party platforms, enhanced administration features as well as user management and sign-off features. Further features, such as survey visualization, will be added in the development.

COMPONENTS

Financial Statistics

Financial Statistics is a collection of annual data from CEB member organizations on their revenue and expenditures. Using this data, revenues disaggregated  by assessed and voluntary contributions can be shown. Also, expenditures at the country, regional and global levels and disaggregated by expenditure categories. These categories were recently reviewed to comply with the Data Cube (see relative tab): they are now divided into humanitarian assistance, development assistance, peace operations and global agenda & specialized assistance.

Human Resources Statistics

  • Personnel Statistics - Every year the CEB Secretariat collects HR data from member organizations and publishes statistics. Reports detail staff demographics such as staff grade, nationality, location, gender and age. Staff with appointments for a period of less than one year are excluded from published data. Reports also exclude information on National Professional Officers, which is provided separately. Statistical charts are updated annually, upon conclusion of the relevant management survey reporting cycle.
  • CENSUS Statistics - The headcount data is mandatory for all field duty stations in non-OECD countries (even if UN HQ is located there (e.g. Nairobi, Kenya), where there are individuals for whom the UN system has a security responsibility. No distinction is made between local and international staff. CENSUS includes, for example, a headcount from the Asian Development Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Procurement Statistics

The annual statistical report on United Nations Procurement (ASR) provides an overview of procurement in the UN system in support of its operations, projects and programmes. Procurement includes all acquisition through purchase or lease of real property, goods or other products (including intellectual property), works or services, as defined by the UN procurement practitioner’s handbook. The report provides a range of information about the categories of goods and services procured by the UN system, as well as the countries from which these goods and services were procured.

The ASR was first presented in 1984 and was prepared by the Inter-Agency Procurement Services Office (IAPSO) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and submitted to the 39th session of the General Assembly. By Resolution 39/220, the General Assembly established a need for regular reporting of this type of information and encouraged organizations of the UN system to participate in this important exercise. Since 2008, the report has been compiled by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The report is also published on the CEB website; the statistics can be accessed from the UNGM website (see relative tab).

WHAT'S NEXT

The DMP is continuously updated and improved by the HLCM Secretariat. During 2019, activities included its development and expansion to include a reporting dashboard system, connected to data or partial data extracts and allows users to interact with customizable dashboards.

References

  • Finance & Budget Network (FBN)
  • Human Resources Network (HRN)
  • Chief Executives Board (CEB)
  • High-level Committee on Management (HLCM)
  • Procurement Network (PN)

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