OICT Office

In September 2008, the United Nations Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), Mr. Choi Soon-Hong, selected seven projects for his ICT Fast Forward Programme called Fast Forward Initiatives (FFI’s). One of the initiatives was iSeek Global Access, designed to make iSeek accessible from anywhere worldwide and, in particular, to remote Secretariat locations which had no access.

The iSeek Global Access FFI is the first of the seven to be 100% completed. All project goals were achieved very quickly and within the 90 day time-box stipulated. iSeek is now globally accessible to traveling Secretariat staff members and more than 100 new sites around the world have been specifically given access, including:

          - All 44 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Field Offices
          - All 63 United Nations Information Centres (UNIC) sites
          - 7 sub-regional offices of the 5 regional commissions
          - 3 regional disarmament offices (UNREC, UN-LiREC, and UNRCPD),

Since the FFI became active, staff use has been considerable and iSeek has been accessed from 61 different countries around the world.

The iSeek FFI project team comprises Phillip Kruss (Project Lead, UNODC Vienna), Nathalie Leroy (iSeek Expert, DPI New York), Alexei Tepaev (Technical Expert, UNODC Vienna), Chand Kaushil (Deployment Specialist, UNODC New Delhi), and Thomas Mayerl (Project Coordinator, UNODC Vienna).

For those interested in the technical details, in implementing the project, Mr. Tepaev of the Information Technology Service (ITS) of UNODC used secure reverse proxy techniques coupled with other security mechanisms. Furthermore, where appropriate, ITS provided/implemented technology, enabling iSeek to automatically launch upon users' PC start-up, as is appropriate for the slower links in many remote locations, thus ensuring at least once-a-day automatic presentation of iSeek to users.

The iSeek Global Access initiative is in line with the goal of the ICT Fast Forward Programme, which is "to facilitate rapid ICT solutions aligned with institutional needs (and) to improve the working life of staff and the larger UN community."  As such, the team is proud to have been one of the seven ICT FF Programme finalists, selected from more than 40 proposals based on their ability to deliver high impact, user-focused solutions in 90 days or less. The selected programmes are:

The iSeek Global Access success story is but one of many to come in support of the CITO's commitment to A Stronger ICT for a Better United Nations, and both DPI and UNODC hope to continue to contribute valuably to future initiatives.

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