This posting from Healthgap may amuse some of you who remember too well the lack of transparency on the part of many actors a year ago. Brad Herbert for Executive Director?

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A call for transparency at the  Global Fund
The  Lancet 2006; 368:815 http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606692969/fulltext

DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69296-9

 The Global Fund to Fight AIDS,  Tuberculosis and Malaria is looking for a new  Executive Director. Its  appealingly straightforward selection process‹ involving the use of a headhunting  firm to seek out the best candidates‹promised to take the politics out of  global-health appointments, just as the Fund's dedication to private-sector  values has brought a new efficiency into global  health. Instead, however, the  Board's aversion to political posturing has resulted in a perverse secrecy  pervading the proceedings. As things stand, no one  will know the names on the  ten-person shortlist to be discussed by the Nomination Committee this week. And  the next Global Fund Executive Director will be  appointed with no open  debate. Such a lack of transparency is damaging  for three main reasons. First, it will prevent the public scrutiny necessary to  ensure that the Fund accelerates  its growth. Now that the novelty of the idea  has worn off, the organisation is at a critical stage. It must fight, if not for  its survival, then for expansion. It has already retreated from its ambitious  funding goals by reducing  the number of financing rounds from the three per year  planned at its inception to one. And, so far, it is only one-third of the way  towards securing the  resources necessary to deliver universal access to HIV/AIDS  treatment and prevention by 2010. Stagnation now would unquestionably mean  failure for the  lofty promises of the G8 nations. Second, there needs to be a frank debate  on what kind of personality is right to take the Fund forward. Sitting on a huge  pot of money confers on the  Global Fund Executive Director a unique power in  global health. But the lean  structure of the organisation means it depends on  international and country-level partners to achieve success. The right candidate  will need a good track  record of resource-mobilisation and the skill to unblock  bottlenecks at country  level. But how should these goals be achieved? Some  insiders want a solid bureaucrat with a flair for management‹something critics  claim Richard Feachem  lacks. However, observers suggest the best strategy for a  new Executive Director would be to hire a separate manager to oversee the  day-to-day running of  the Geneva headquarters, freeing the top person to solve  bigger problems. Whether this means recruiting a big personality or a gifted  administrator is a  debate that has yet to be held. Third, transparency would enable open  debate about the most crucial issue facing the new Executive Director: how the  Fund should interact with other international actors. Central to this discussion  is the Fund's disastrous relationship with WHO. Because the Executive Director  is technically a WHO employee,  the two organisations are tied through a series  of bureaucratic tangles that  deprive the Global Fund of the flexibility it  needs. It can take 6 months to  secure a new appointment and every travel request  must go through WHO's lumbering internal procedures. But more troublesome is the  dysfunctional dynamic  surrounding technical advice. The Fund views its  responsibilities clearly: it  is a bank that moves money. Whereas it is  cash-strapped WHO that has the job  of making sure the money is well spent‹and it  is struggling. The Global Fund  should use its penchant for performance standards  to hold international agencies, as well as grant recipients, to account. How to  resolve this complicated relationship should be a matter that candidates for the Executive  Directorship publicly debate. Transparency, accountability, and  dispassionate independence are the ideals on which the Global Fund most prides  itself. It is therefore a perplexing hypocrisy that the selection process for a  new Executive Director seems bereft  of these values. The Global Fund's Board is  right to acknowledge that the circus of political campaigning too often means  poorly qualified people being  installed in top positions for the wrong reasons.  But it is a serious mistake to  let this aversion erode its accountability.  Without open debate, there is a significant danger that pressure from some Board  members who want to install  a caretaker-manager‹which will effectively limit the  Fund's growth‹will succeed in compromising the vote. By contrast, a successful  transition process  could have the knock-on effect of dragging the upcoming WHO Director-General  elections into better shape. To give the Executive Director selection  process the credibility it deserves  The Lancet calls on Carol Jacobs,  chair of the Global Fund's Board, to: (1) make public the shortlist of  candidates circulated this week; (2) ask candidates to publish an election  platform and declare their intentions for the  future of the Fund; and (3) ensure  that the Board's deliberations are open to  public scrutiny. Anything less would  damage irrevocably the Fund's potential to  improve global  health.

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