Holding it all together: The Office of the Secretary General

When I took up my post as Director of the Office of the Secretary General back in February, I never expected I would soon be chairing the Secretariat’s Crisis Management Team to deal with a global pandemic.

The COVID-19 crisis has been a stress test for all parts of our Organization. Yet despite the massive disruption to our personal lives, I have been extremely impressed by how staff across our Organization have pulled together and persevered in their work.

Since the outset of the crisis, the Office of the Secretary General has contributed, as a provider of central services, to the Organization’s continued work. This includes providing policy advice and support to the 2020 Albanian OSCE Chair and its Troika partners, Sweden and Slovakia, and the Secretary General as OSCE Chief Administrative Officer.

Over the past four months, OSG has also actively supported the development and communication of a responsible and consistent approach to the pandemic, prioritizing the protection of OSCE staff while ensuring business continuity. I would like to commend the entire OSG team of over a hundred women and men across nine units for their dedication, flexibility and incredibly hard work during this unprecedented situation.

Four months since the Austrian Government and other OSCE participating States introduced measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, we can draw a number of initial conclusions from an OSG perspective:

First, we can respond nimbly in times of crisis. With the Crisis Management Team, we quickly set up a functioning internal steering mechanism to ensure effective co-ordination within the Secretariat and with the Organization’s other structures. This has enabled a cohesive response to the pandemic throughout the Organization. By facilitating these crisis management efforts, the OSG Security Management unit has been a key part of the OSCE early warning system, continuously providing updates and recommendations on preventive measures as the situation has evolved.

Second, a number of OSG’s functions have been critical to maintaining business continuity during the pandemic. For example, OSG’s Conference and Language Services unit quickly adjusted to the challenges of social distancing by adopting online technologies to enable the OSCE decision-making bodies to meet. In this regard, the OSCE was far ahead of many other international organizations. Already in April, as requested by the Albanian Chairmanship, the OSCE Permanent Council and the Forum for Security Co-operation were back up and running online – with simultaneous interpretation in all six official OSCE languages. Furthermore, the OSG’s Office of Legal Affairs has dealt with a number of complex queries from the Albanian Chairmanship, participating States, and departments within the Secretariat, and from the Institutions and missions that involved deviations from established practice due to these exceptional circumstances.

Third, times of crisis involve crisis communication. With support from OSG’s Executive Management unit, the Secretary General regularly updated all OSCE staff on the Organization’s response to the pandemic, and together with the Albanian Chair, informed participating States about contingency planning and duty of care responsibilities. OSG’s Communications and Media Relations section quickly set up a COVID-19 portal on the OSCE website to provide information and share stories from the field on the OSCE’s support to our participating States. The portal includes this very blog for sharing more informally how various OSCE structures are working in the new reality, and offering guidance and advice to states on how to navigate and address new and evolving security challenges created by the pandemic.

Fourth, maintaining contact remotely can actually benefit co-ordination, at least in the short term.

Teleworking has speeded up communication with the OSCE Documentation Centre in Prague, the guardian of the Organization’s institutional memory. Instant online availability has also meant that co-ordination meetings with ODIHR in Warsaw, the HCNM in The Hague, and the RFOM and the Secretariat in Vienna have become more frequent. The OSG External Co-operation unit has intensified its regular contacts with other international and regional organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the European Union and NATO, to share information on responses to the COVID-19 crisis. This helps leverage the capacities of each organization and enables effective co-ordination of human resource policies and substantive responses, for example on medical evacuation from affected regions.

Fifth, OSG has consistently advocated for OSCE participating States to adopt an inclusive approach to COVID-19 response and recovery by addressing the specific needs of women and men as well as young people. The OSG Gender Issues Programme immediately responded to reports of rising rates of domestic violence throughout the OSCE region at the onset of the lockdown by tackling the disproportionate impact that the pandemic has on women. It also worked with the Department of Human Resources to produce a guidance note for OSCE managers and staff on gender-sensitive management practices during remote working. And together with OSG’s Adviser on Youth and Security, it promoted intergenerational discussions on the specific needs and potential contributions of youth in the current crisis.

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We now need to prepare for what lies ahead.

We are only at the beginning of a protracted period when the “new normal” will constantly challenge us to be creative and adaptable. Stretching the imagination beyond the current crisis could help participating States and OSCE structures prioritize our activities, even in the middle of the leadership crisis affecting the OSCE Institutions. Initiating a conversation on strategic foresight promoted by the OSG Strategic Policy Support Unit is one way we are seeking to encourage more forward-looking and long-term perspectives.

Located at the center of a complex, decentralized and varied institutional landscape, OSG has a key role in holding everything together. Especially in times of crisis, success depends on a careful balance between cohesion and respect for the diversity of mandates. Fully conscious of these realities, I am committed to employing the resourcefulness and dedication of the OSG staff to support the OSCE participating States and the Organization as a whole to the best of our collective ability. As an experienced sailor, I am confident that we will together continue to weather this storm.

The Office of the Secretary General groups service-oriented offices (Office of Legal Affairs, Conference and Language Services, the OSCE Documentation Centre in Prague), and policy-oriented offices (Communication and Media Relations, External Co-operation, Gender Issues) as well as Security Management, Executive Management and Strategic Policy Support.