UN Pension Fund: Last year, an internal investment governance audit found conflicts of interest and said the Fund must transform its investment culture. How’s the Fund doing? 20 April 2021

 According to a February 25, 2021 article in Bloomberg,  Mark Carney, ”a leading figure behind this year’s global climate talks, walked back remarks claiming the half-trillion-dollar asset manager where he works [Brookfield] had neutralized pollution across its portfolio”.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-25/mark-carney-s-brookfield-net-zero-claim-confounds-climate-experts

 

The article explains that the controversy hinges on whether a company can claim a “net zero” status, i.e, that an investment in renewable energy avoided an investment in the same amount of fossil fuels. Climate experts called foul and Carney swiftly backtracked.

Brookfield and the Fund

Who’s Mark Carney and why should Fund members care? Carney is  UN Secretary-General António Guterres' Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance. https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/personnel-appointments/2019-12-01/secretary-general-appoints-mark-joseph-carney-of-canada-special-envoy-climate-action-and-finance. He’s also,  according to the Bloomberg article, adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

 

Brookfield has a history with the UN Pension Fund. When former Director of Investments Herman Bril  co-edited a book on “Sustainable Investing” earlier this year, Carney wrote the foreword.https://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Investing-Herman-Bril/dp/0367367351

Reportedly,  Bril recused himself from a private market committee (PMC) meeting concerning Brookfield on August 26, 2020, claiming that he had only just found out that his friend, Mark Carney, intended to join Brookfield.

Pedro Guazo, appointed as Representative of the Secretary-General for Investments, and head of the Office of Investment Management (OIM) since the departure of Sudhir Rajkumar at the end of March 2020, reportedly requested an internal independent conflict of interest review of the incident by the Fund’s Risk and Compliance Unit.

UN Pension Fund: Open message: UNJSPF potential security breach: Publishing of personal data of UNJSPF Fund members by a third party, April 18, 2021

UPDATE: Exchange of emails with Rosemarie McClean, Chief Executive of Pension Administration, UNJSPF, about the potential security breach related to the publishing on Facebook of personal data of UNJSPF Fund members by a third party on April 18, 2021.

 

From: Loraine Rickard-Martin 

To: Rosemarie McClean 

Cc: Martha Helena Lopez, Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti 
Date: Fri, Apr 23, 2021 at 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: Open message: UNJSPF potential security breach: Publishing of personal data of UNJSPF Fund members by a third party

 

Dear Rosemarie,

 

Thank you for your response. I am gratified to note that the Fund will “do [its] utmost to make sure pension payments continue" for retirees lacking 2020 Certificates of Entitlement. However, you provide no assurance regarding my concern that given the particular communications and other challenges of Covid-19,  the Fund should “ on humanitarian grounds, refrain from any suspension of benefits until the situation of each retiree can be satisfactorily clarified.”

 

You imply, by stating that the Fund “look[s] to further strengthen the handling of personal data with the associations {FAFICS]”, that the Fund intends to continue sharing retirees’ personal data with an organization that has just been caught mishandling such data, at least for  “400 retirees and beneficiaries …published on a social network by a local retiree association”, according to this post on the Fund’s website dated 19 April:

https://www.unjspf.org/erroneous-publication-of-a-list-of-retirees-under-the-annual-certificate-of-entitlement-exercise/

 

The list of retirees' personal data that was published on Facebook, pertained to UNICEF retirees only. Your response does not allay the concern I raised in my message that data from “the UN and its funds, programmes and agencies in the same situation, were also similarly shared with FAFICS” and similarly mishandled. 

 

How can the Fund be confident that the mishandled data was confined to the 400 UNICEF retirees in question and that data of retirees from the UN or its funds and programmes, was not similarly mishandled by FAFICS? My experience with FAFICS, which is shared by many retirees, of whom the vast majority (75 per cent) are not members of FAFICS,  does not inspire confidence concerning any of its activities. 

 

While I appreciate your response, it also does not answer my stated concern about “specific steps [is] the Fund [is] taking to inform its members about the extent of the security breach”, information that the Fund clearly does not currently have, since its post of 19 April limits the security breach to a single case about which it is aware. Yet, it is undoubtedly the Fund's responsibility to perform its own due diligence and not rely on the word of any third party. Until that occurs, and with all good intentions, you will continue to be unable to address my concern about how the Fund intends to  “mitigate the risk of members’ data being compromised”.

 

With appreciation and regards,

Loraine

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UN Pension Fund: Message from UN participant representatives, 1 April 2021

Message from UN participant representatives: Important developments at the pension fund regarding governance, investments, safety, efficiency and payments 

 

 

BROADCAST United Nations 

Thursday, 01 April, 2021 10:12 AM

Dear Colleagues,

Version française ci-dessous

As your elected representatives on the UN Pension Board (the Board) we would like to update you on how we have been working to improve how your pension fund is led and governed, how pensions are paid, how your investments are kept more secure and the status of the Geneva office. 

This report includes important decisions of the UN General Assembly (A/RES/75/246) and a subsequent special board meeting on how your fund is governed.

We want your fund to be better governed and safer

We have been pushing to improve how our  fund is governed and led in order to make it more safe, responsive and efficient. We know that for many of us it is our only form of retirement income.

We have secured some important improvements, including:

• A complete change and restructuring of the fund’s leadership.
• A General Assembly instruction to prevent conflicts of interest by separating the board and its Secretary from the Chief Executive of Pension Administration whom the Board oversees.

 

But just as important is how the Board operates. It is supposed to act in your interest by holding the leadership to account and setting the fund’s strategy. But with 93 members and non-members meeting once a year, it has all the agility of a container ship stuck in the Suez Canal, and has struggled to fulfill its mandate.

 

This is why we believe in a more manageable 19 member board, meeting at least quarterly to be able to carry out core functions such as reviewing financial positions, acting on committee reports, meeting with management and making timely decisions (see our proposal at the bottom of this message). 

 

We also believe its composition should reflect the participation weights of each member organization so that your concerns are appropriately and democratically dealt with.

 

In support of this, the General Assembly commissioned reviews by OIOS and an independent consultancy called Mosaic. Both reviews broadly aligned themselves with our views.

 

However, to our frustration and that of the General Assembly, these efforts have faced dogged resistance from some in the Board. 

 

In December, the General Assembly asked the Board for “concrete reform proposals and plans” in line with best practices. Following a week-long meeting in February, the Board said it would continue to study various options. It neither committed to a smaller board nor a more democratic one. However we are continuing to push for positive change.

 

We want the fund to follow its rules

 

On a related matter, we are encouraged that the General Assembly has for the third time refused a request from the rest of the Board to remove the Fund from the legal purview of the UN Appeals Tribunal and place it in a legal vacuum. The Assembly has also delayed an amendment that would disenfranchise hundreds of participants from board membership.

UN Pension Fund: Update on Facial Recognition Technology, 12 February 2021

Further to my earlier update on the Facial Recognition Technology system recently established by the Fund (link at the end of this post), a further email exchange with Rosemarie McClean, Chief Executive of Pension Administration, UNJSPF, produced additional information. I note some remaining information gaps in my response.

I also noted in my email to Ms. McClean that the issue is only partly one of information gaps. It also encompasses concerns about transparency and trust relating to the operations and oversight of our Fund. 

See the full exchange below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Email to Rosemarie McClean

From Loraine Rickard-Martin

12 February 2021

 

Thank you for this additional information, including your assurances that the digital facial recognition CE system is optional and will not replace the paper-based process. 

 

Regarding  my questions about what proportion of the photographic data in setting up the system was of women and people of color, the accuracy of the technology, and procedures in place to address misidentification, no doubt because I do not have the necessary technical expertise, and while I appreciate your response, I'm unable to evaluate it.

 

You state that “no photograph database [was] set up for the Digital CE because users biometrics are not identified and compared against any other individuals’ photo or visual features”.

 

Yet the Fund’s webmail article states that  “The Digital CE App uses an advanced facial recognition algorithm based on “learning” mechanisms that included data related to all ethnic groups.”

 

If not photographs, what is the nature of the “data related to all ethnic groups”?

 

On the cost of the system, as owners of the Fund, and for the sake of transparency, participants and beneficiaries should be able to know  the actual cost of the system and ongoing maintenance, and not simply that it falls within “the approved IT budget for 2021.”

 

Finally, there are many reports by retirees about technical difficulties they’re encountering in registering for the system. One recent message received today from a retiree is typical of reports I'm receiving by email and those posted on social media: “I downloaded the app and the code they sent doesn’t work at all. They [the Fund] also failed to respond, it’s three days now….”

 

You’ve often said publicly, and stated in your presentation to the pension board meeting last July, that “the Fund need[s] a clear strategic direction and improved trust among its stakeholders.”

 

To your point, and a reality I’m sure you recognize, this issue is only partly about a gap in specific information on a new alternative CE system.  The overarching issue is that a new system was put in place without prior consultation or outreach to Fund members about the what, why, and how’s of the system. 

 

The result is  the current widespread confusion, uncertainties, and concerns on the range of issues on which we've been corresponding. Many of the current concerns could have been mitigated had the  Fund shared specifics of the pilot project, the third-party review on security issues, and provided guidance on specific technical issues, prior to launching the system.

UN Pension Fund: Update on Facial Recognition Technology, 5 February 2021

  

This is an update concerning the UN Today article titled “The UN Pension Fund adopts facial recognition technology: Key questions” (link below) by Elaine Fultz, dated 4 February 2021 posted yesterday. 

 

I sent an email yesterday to Ms. Rosemarie McClean, Chief Executive of the Pension Administration, attaching the UN Today article for her information.

 

A few hours later, and to her credit, Ms. McClean wrote back to me to say that the UNJSPF’s web article (link below) on the launch of the digital CE system, had been revised to include answers to the questions in the UN Today article.

 

I responded to Ms. McClean by email today to thank her for her swift action in revising the web article. I also noted that while I recognize and appreciate that the web article now provides additional information on the  questions in the UN Today article,  I also believe there are information gaps.

 

First, here are excerpts from the responses in the revised web article to some of the questions in the UN Today article: (Go to the link below to read the entire response on each topic).

 

Coercion: “The paper-based form of the Certificate of Entitlement (CE) will still be available for those who do not want to adopt the Digital CE application.”

 

Security: “The biometric data used by the App are captured and stored only locally, on the users’ device. Therefore, users remain under full control of their data, at all times.”

 

Accuracy: “The Digital CE App uses an advanced facial recognition algorithm based on “learning” mechanisms that included data related to all ethnic groups.”

 

Efficiency: “The blockchain supporting the Digital CE does not involve the consumption of significant energy resources and/or extra costs, other than those typically associated with the support of ordinary ICT servers and applications.”

 

Here are the remaining questions that are, in my view,  as yet unanswered in the revised web article: 

 

Coercion: What assurances can the Fund provide that the aim is not to move eventually to a mandatory digital system, particularly in light of unequal access to technology as stated in the Fund’s revised web article, that “access to the mobile app stores for Android or iOS (iPhone and iPad) to install the app can be limited in specific countries”?

 

Security: While the revised web article states that “The biometric data used by the App are captured and stored only locally, on the users’ device”,  are beneficiaries using the digital system at risk for having their biometric data stolen from their devices?

Accuracy: What proportion of the photograph data in developing the digital system was of women and people of color; what was the level of accuracy of facial identification in the pilot program; and what procedures are in place to protect beneficiaries in cases of misidentification?

 

Efficiency: Assuming that the Fund's information is accurate on the consumption of energy resources and environmental impact, what is the cost of the digital system and its required maintenance? 

Note: While the UN Today article makes the point that "many UN retirees are not computer savvy or lack the latest technology" required to access the digital system, I meant to include the point in item 1 “Coercion”, that many retirees do not use electronic devices or the internet, and even those who have access and are familiar with digital technology have reported, since the launch of the new system, that they are hesitant to register for the above reasons, and/or are experiencing technical difficulties in attempting to register.

 

I’ll provide an update on whatever additional information Ms. McClean may provide.

 

https://untoday.org/pension-fund-adopts-facial-recognition/

 

https://www.unjspf.org/retirees-and-beneficiaries-the-new-digital-certificate-of-entitlement-app-is-now-live/

Loraine Rickard-Martin

5 February 2021

The UN Pension Fund's adopts facial recognition technology: Key questions, by Elaine Fultz, 4 February 2021

 

The UN Pension Fund Adopts Facial Recognition Technology: Key questions

By Elaine Fultz*

4 Feb 2021

"Last month, the UN Pension Fund launched a new app for annual recertification of pension eligibility.[1] This app is an alternative to the current paper recertification process, allowing retirees to  use electronic facial recognition technology (FRT) for biometric identification. The Fund portrays this app as a “convenience” for retirees that will “simplify their experience”.[2] However, there is little in this announcement or the materials that accompany it to reassure those who worry about risks associated with FRT, including misidentification due to built-in gender and racial biases, loss of personal privacy, misuse and theft of electronic data, and the inordinately high energy use of some FRT systems.[3] My search of the publicly available UNJSPF documents on its FRT initiative left me with four questions...."

Read full article here:

https://untoday.org/pension-fund-adopts-facial-recognition/