Mr. Ban will focus on such areas as improving procurement, human resources, audits and accounting and reducing transaction costs during the discussions in New York, his spokesperson Michele Montas told reporters.

Ms. Montas said the Secretary-General viewed this CEB meeting as the start of a process to make the entire UN system more effective and coherent in its business practices and to save money.

“This includes the issue of internal audits,” she said. “Most of the members of the CEB have their own governing bodies – made up of Member States – who ultimately take the decision” on whether to release them “so the aim of this meeting is to decide on the best path to follow to try to harmonize practices within the UN system when it comes to the handling of internal audits and deciding what gets released. The same goes for issues relating to the Ethics Office.”

Aside from management issues, the Board is also slated to take up a series of programme issues, including climate change, African development and the pilot “One UN” programme aimed at streamlining UN operations in each country.

Mr. Ban plans to push UN agencies, funds and programmes to follow the efforts of the Secretariat to make the UN building ‘climate neutral’ during the planned overhaul known as the Capital Master Plan, the spokesperson said.