Paris, 29 December 1998

Note for the attention of Mr Patrick Reis-Ekelund

I decided to hold a meeting with you on 26 November 1998. It seemed to be approriate to remind you of the working principles of an international organisation, particulary as they are determined by your job desription and the solemn declaration which you have signed.

I underlined your hierarchical position under the direct supervision of myself and the deputy head of service, and general of the Director General. This means that you are not authorised to send letters, faxes or electronic mail signed by yourself without direct instruction or for simple informations (1), that you are not to refuse a task based on your own appreciation of priorities (2), and that your contacts with your superiors can not be limited to electronic mail... I instruct you to submit all correspondence for my signature through the deputy head of service, accompanied by adequate background materials and to speak with me about them if necessary.

I also underlined the necessity of a less threatening style of correspondence towards the Regional Coordinators of the Office: your position was indeed created to permit the control of the Regional Representations by the General directorate but also and mainly to help them in their work.

In a general manner, it seems essential considering your responsibilities that you perform your functions in harmony with all the officials with whom necessary professional exchanges must be such as to favour the functioning of the department, and that the documents which you prepare are established in accordance with the habitual formats used by the officials of the OIE.

Summarising our discussion, I asked you to correct your manner of serving in line with the preceding observations.

Following our meeting, you deemed useful to address a note to me. I have taken note of it, in a positive manner, as you affirm to want to conform to my observations. I must, nevertheless, respond to a certain number of claims which appear inexact to me (cf. appendix).

Guy Jannot
Head of the Administrative and Financial Department

(1) In this context, I cited an example: having recently edited a draft reply regarding a modification to the draft Agreement between the royal Thai Government and the OIE, you translated and sent this text without letting me review and verify the translation.
(2) The preparation of the meetings of 13 and 24 November on the establishment of a buffer zone against foot and mouth disease presented obvious difficulties of which I have received a report from the Deputy head of Department through copy of the note which he addressed to you on 8 December.

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Appendix

Reply elements to your note of 27 November

Working procedures

- The use of e-mail for internal communications is completely acceptable. My observation consisted in specifying that the working relationships between you and your superiors could not be mainly established by this means.
- Of course my instruction to append background materials to dossiers only repeated several previous occasional requests. The same applies to my instruction that you conform to the formats used within the OIE.
- If I always find it prepferable to leave a certain intiative to the officials of the Administrative and Financial Department, it is evident that all matters having a certain importance must be examined and signed by the Director General or myself. On this point all the the other officials of the Central Bureau grasp what falls under their own intiaitive or what belongs to their Heads of department. During our meeting I linked your attitude to a lack of experience of administrative life.

Behaviour

I confirm that you must have a more nuanced and less brutal attitude in all your professional relationships, with the personnel of the OIE and external persons.

Our meeting of early July 1998

You have written “I also recalled that previous to our wage discussion [early July 1998], you had expressed complete satisfaction with my professional performance at the Office.” On the contrary, during our meeting early July, I clearly indicated that it was premature to draw a conclusion on the question that you are satisfactory. Effectively, the nature of the position is such that it is at the end of a budgetary and accounting period that I will be able to verify the good financial follow-up of the dossiers of which you are responsible (3).

At this occasion, the budgetary document that you had drafted early July 1998 to justify available budgetary means permitting a raise of your wages was incorrect (only the amount of your net salary was included in the costs, the important costs on the salary had been omitted!).

I decided to specify that at that time nothing justified a revision of the our contractual agreement established when you were hired: the duties given being in confomity with the job description. I also told you that it was not possible to foresee adapting the position created to your claims, were they based on the level of your degrees.

Finally, I did not think need to take into consideration the unclear observations that you made on the salaries of the other officials of the Central Bureau.

(3) Regarding the financial follow-up of the Regional Representations and the SEAFMD Program, I fear that you do not succeed in mastering completely the different aspects. At the time of our meeting on 26 November, in spite of my requests, the identification of transfers of funds between Argentina, the Central Bureau and the Regional Representation for the Americas, still remained muddled...