As part of the ICT Fast Forward Programme, last summer the Office of the Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO) selected five ICT initiatives out of over 30 proposals received from United Nations staff around the globe.
The five Fast Forward (FF) Initiatives were selected by the CITO, Assistant Secretary-General Choi Soon-hong, and ICT managers throughout the Secretariat based on the potential of candidate proposals to provide high-value, user-focused solutions within 90 days or less.
The five Fast Forward Initiatives have now been completed.
The goal of the ICT Fast Forward Programme is to facilitate rapid ICT solutions aligned with institutional needs or to improve the working life of staff and the larger UN community. Fast Forward Initiatives also encourage ICT personnel to be innovative and work in teams across ICT units.
Details follow on five completed initiatives and one pilot.
1. Member States on the Record
Currently, access to information about Member States’ participation in the UN is scattered throughout various web sites and online databases. To find this information requires extensive training in UN information resources. This initiative used a wiki to gather and organize information consistently requested by Member States and the wider UN community. The content was then migrated to HTML and posted on deleGATE – iSeek for Member States to provide public access to the information.
This initiative, dubbed Member States on the Record will make it easier to get to the primary source materials related to the Member States, such as content produced by the Member States, and published by the UN. It includes, among other resources, meeting records, periodic reports for human rights treaties and the presentation of the credentials of Permanent Representatives. It can be accessed through deleGATE or directly at: http://www.un.org/memberstatesontherecord.
This initiative will be officially launched today, 13 November. Look for a separate iSeek story on this.
Proposed by: Department of Public Information
Project Team: Phillip Alnswick-Tobias, Susan Lee Kurtas, Saher Mohammed (intern), Maria Paniagua, Nanci St. John
2. Connecting the United Nations: Instant Messaging (IM) for the UN Secretariat
As we all know, instant messaging has become a common functionality in today’s workplace and is an integrated feature of the UN’s email system – Lotus Notes. However, it has not been possible to chat between duty stations - until now!
This initiative built upon a UN Office at Vienna (UNOV) success story which provided chat capabilities between its Headquarters and UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) field offices to implement chat between duty stations. At the moment staff can chat with any Lotus account holder within their duty station and already with some other duty stations.
At this stage the following connections are possible:
• UNON - UNODC
• ECLAC - UNON
• ECLAC - UNODC
• ECA - UNON
• ECA - UNODC
• UNHQ - UNON
• UNHQ - UNODC
Additional duty stations are being added as we speak with the goal of connecting UNOG and ESCWA in the coming months.
A few advantages of using IM over email include:
• IM works very well on low bandwidth connections
• IM allows you to send and share files
• IM lets the user see immediately if another user is available
• IM can be used to resolve simple issues quickly
Click here for instructions on how to access Instant Messaging.
For more information or for help in accessing this service contact the OICT Help desk at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
Proposed by: UNOV/UNODC
Project Team: Thomas Mayerl, Reinhold Strobl, Ernst Hönig
With cooperation and support from: Gideon de Beer and Alberto Araya (ECLAC), Suresh Khatry and Mohammed Ngure (UNON), Peter Tong (UNHQ), Viorel Iordache and Zewdalem Shitaye (ECA), as well as staff from UNOG and ESCWA
3. DocBox (United Nations Universal Document Link)
As online readers, we have all come to appreciate the links that provide us immediate access to other documents referenced in text. With just one click, DocBox gives you the ability to open the most up-to-date official UN document in all six official languages from ODS without actually entering ODS. This “smart link” can be added to web pages, word documents or PDFs.
The link shows the following pop-window or “doc box” or “eDoc” with options to choose the format and language of your choice. It also indicates the size of the document, which can be a factor in low bandwidth areas of UN operations in the field.
More information on how to use Doc Box can be found at this link.
Proposed by: DGACM
Project Team: Felix Carayon, Ben Knight
4. e-Subscription
Many Member States and UN staff struggle with finding the time to track the release of official documents on specific areas of interest. This initiative takes the hassle out of issues tracking by allowing any user to sign up for a daily email with links to all official documents published that day on a specific topic that you define.
This initiative, which is currently being piloted with a small test group, allows you to pre-define specific key words such as “human rights” or “trafficking” or “accountability”, so that all documents containing those key words are automatically emailed to you when published. In addition, the service also allows you to further refine your choice by document type.
There are seven categories of document type: General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, Security Council, Trusteeship Council, Secretariat, Journal and All.
All documents released by each body and/or which meet your key word definitions are emailed to you – taking all the hassle out of individually searching and tracking official documents on specific topics or by specific bodies.
The registration for e-Subscription can be done via the following Web link: http://edoc.un.org/edoc?APPNAME=edoc&PRGNAME=SUB_LOGIN. This service will be further improved in the coming months.
Proposed by: DGACM
Project Team: Felix Carayon, Bojan Grozdanic, Varda Kahalani, Ben Knight, Andrey Shumikhin, Laurent Toullier, Hongtao Wu
5. Duplex Printing Project
Unfortunately, the UN on average uses more paper now than ever before. This initiative’s aim is to reduce paper consumption through double-sided printing. The Organization has an opportunity to substantially reduce the amount of paper it uses in day-to-day activities by setting centrally managed printers to print using the duplex printing option. Up until now our printers have defaulted to single-sided. With this simple change the Organization can potentially cut its paper consumption in half on networked printers!
The technology used to enable this project is an evolution of currently deployed processes. OICT has fifteen print servers deployed that host approximately 740 network print servers. These printers are easily configured to allow duplex printing by default for printers with duplex capabilities.
This initiative will be implemented next week across all networked computers at UN Headquarters in New York. Desktop printers are not networked so must be configured individually – instructions on how to change your printers default settings to duplex printing will be sent next week to local ICT Focal Points.
Proposed by: OICT
Project Team: Scott Skinnider
6. My IMIS
Currently, staff member information can be found in IMIS, but to have a clear overall picture involves a great deal of delving. It is often impossible for staff members themselves to do this because of the way that IMIS is structured, IMIS security implications or simply because staff do not know where to look.
While this is a common problem across the Secretariat, ICT staff at UNON decided to propose a potential solution. As their proposed FF Initiative, UNON decided to implement a “myIMIS” portal, which was launched this month.
Look for a separate iSeek story on this.
The myIMIS portal allows all staff members of UNEP, UN-Habitat and UNON offices, including offices away from Headquarters and liaison offices to easily at any time from anywhere accomplish the following IMIS tasks:
• Review HR personal information and correct it if need be (only part of personnel data as addresses can be corrected)
• Review current staff entitlements and simulate possible entitlements changes like salaries, rental subsidy, medical insurance premiums, overall benefits if there is a movement to a different duty station
• Staff members will be able to download their payslips for any month, have their receivables/payables statements
• Access to leave and overtime as well as telephone bills without secondary login
UNON/HRMS and UNON/BFMS will not need to spend time to answer staff member queries about their profiles, entitlements, benefits, etc. and at the same time each staff member will be able to inquire on their data at their HR and payroll related information at any time from anywhere.
As a result UNEP, UN-Habitat and UNON staff members now have access to the following data:
- personnel and appointment data;
- dependents information - spouse and children
- review of personnel actions and printing of personnel actions
- address information
- banking details
- receivables still outstanding
- payable made to staff member since they joined the organization and done through IMIS (not including payroll)
- salary entitlements and printing of payslips for any period after implementing IMIS Payroll
- rental subsidy and estimated calculation of rental subsidy for any duty station, category and so on
- salary estimation for any duty station, category and so on
- leave balances and detail leave related information for any period
Proposed by: UNON
Project Team: Charles Emer, Vladimir Petkov
