'A very different way of doing business'.

• Position: An Initiative from Within

Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced on 23 September a plan to strengthen the United Nations Organization and prioritize its actions to meet the goals identified by Member States in the Millennium Declaration of 2000. In the report, he lists specific actions and says the reform of the Organization is an initiative from within.

* A revised Programme Budget reflecting the priorities of the Millennium Summit.

Human rights

* Strengthen UN actions at the country level.

* New streamlined reporting procedures.

* Review of the special procedures by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

* Development of a plan by the High Commissioner to strengthen management.

Public information

* A Division of Strategic Communications to devise, disseminate and evaluate UN messages; an Outreach Division to group services to delegations and liaise with civil society; strengthen the News and Media Division, which will now include the Department's Web site operation.

* A three-year evaluation of the Department of Public Information (DPI), with assistance from the Office of Internal Oversight Services.

* Rationalize the network of United Nations information Centres around regional hubs, starting with the creation of a Western-European hub.

* The Dag Hammarskjold Library to improve electronic access to UN collections; facilitate the transfer of paper collections to electronic files, and train depository librarians.

* Reduce the number of the Organization's publications, and improve their coherence, focus and scheduling, including those from DPI.

Serving Member States better

* Consolidate reports on various subjects; write sharper reports with clearly defined actions and page limits.

* Encourage the General Assembly to review the need and frequency of recurring reports.

* Changes to planning and managing meetings and documentation.

* Strengthen the effectiveness of the Organization's presence in developing countries and countries emerging from conflict, through such features as joint programming, pooling of resources, common databases, knowledge networks, dedicated support for the resident coordinator and integrated planning, and budgeting and resource mobilization tools.

* Roles and responsibilities in the area of technical cooperation to be clarified by September 2003.

* An Assistant Secretary-General to support policy coherence and management to be appointed in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

* A policy planning unit to be...