By Peter O'Neil, Canwest News Service
March 14, 2009 3:01 PM
PARIS — The World Health Organization says an increasingly problem-plagued computer system introduced last summer won’t impact the United Nations’ ability to deal with a global pandemic or some other future health crises.
“WHO’s ability to respond to an international health crisis has not been impaired at all,” insisted Daniel Epstein, spokesman for WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan, the Hong Kong-born, Canada-educated head of the United Nations’ top health agency.
The $55.5 million US internal management system, introduced last summer despite a string of warnings from an outside auditor that more preparatory work was needed, was supposed to streamline operations and save money.
But instead of making it faster and cheaper to process payroll and travel, execute contracts and deliver health programs, the system has triggered cost overruns, plunging employee morale and created technical glitches such as a huge payroll fiasco last month, say critics.
Thousands of staff members were shortchanged on their February pay by as much as $850 US each at the United Nations health branch, according to letters sent to management by the associations representing employees at WHO and UNAIDS, another United Nations organization that relies on the WHO’s new system to manage payroll, contracts and other internal services.
Some WHO employees and contractors have gone months without getting paid, while others have reportedly been paid twice as a result of system hiccups.
Some employees at UNAIDS have had to use credit cards to cover basic living expenses because of salary shortfalls. Others can’t get loans because banks won’t accept the payroll system’s incomprehensible, voluminous pay “stubs” as proof of employment, according to the UNAIDS employees’ letter.
“All of us joined WHO under the assumption that what we do saves lives,” stated the first of the WHO employee letters to Dr. Chan, leaked to a Geneva-based website last autumn.
“We are concerned for the lives of people whom we affect, whether it is a staff member who is a single mother trying to make rent, or a small business dependent on a contract, or a person living with AIDS in Africa.”
Chan, who promised an “open, transparent and visible” reign when she took over WHO in 2006, has declined interview requests about the growing fiasco over the so-called Global Management System based on Oracle Corp. software.
Epstein noted that Dr. Chan has acknowledged the technical problems, stating during her year-end message to staff last December that the problems were “greater than expected” and that they have her “urgent attention.”
The Canadian government, which contributed $151 million US in 2006-07 (WHO’s most recent figures for member country contributions), is “concerned” about WHO’s problems.
Health Canada spokesman Philippe Laroche said WHO is keeping member states informed and doing “everything possible” to deal with the matter. For instance, WHO has delayed any further introduction of the troubled system beyond its Geneva headquarters and one of the six regional centres in the Philippines.
“Like other member states, Canada is concerned and continues to monitor the situation closely.”
WHO employs more than 7,000 people at its Geneva headquarters and around the world in its role in leading the global health research agenda, helping to set health standards, monitoring health trends, and providing technical support for poorer countries struggling with health crises such as HIV-AIDS.
A further public relations headache for WHO is that the software services provider that won the contract to manage the system’s implementation, Satyam Computer, has been embroiled in a scandal that has won it the nickname “India’s Enron.”
The company admitted in January that it falsified more than $1 billon US in earnings and assets.
Chan was the high-profile top health official in Hong Kong before joining the WHO, earning some criticism but mostly praise for her handling of the 1997 avian flu outbreak and the 2003 SARS outbreak.
She spent several years in Canada in the 1970s while earning degrees in home economics and then medicine at the University of Western Ontario in London.
Chan gave the thumbs-up to the 2008 launch despite the May 9, 2008, warnings from an external auditor, who advised that numerous pre-launch testing and training procedures still had to be implemented.
The audit warned of “a number of risks” that could, if steps weren’t taken, “render the system vulnerable, even necessitating costly rectifications at a later stage.”
The auditor said WHO had accepted all its recommendations, giving them “high priority.” At the subsequent May General Assembly one of Chan’s top officials told delegates WHO “would implement all the recommendations of the external auditor.”
The September 2008 employees’ association letter said “it appears little of what was publicly committed to was done,” and that employees’ questions about the lack of preparations and rollout testing prior to the July launch have been greeted with “silence.”
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