A plan proposed by the Secretary-General, and now under consideration by the General Assembly, aims to substantially improve the United Nations Secretariat’s information and communications technology (ICT) operation and services, while taking critical steps to achieve efficiency gains in years to come.

The win-win opportunity – not only to gain substantial efficiency and service improvements but also to do so in a way that lowers the curve of projected budget growth in the future – was revealed by an unprecedented new study of the Secretariat’s ICT capacities, completed earlier this year.

Since 1998, the Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) has been operating a unique programme called the Mission Donation Programme (MDP) for the benefit of United Nations Permanent Missions and Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The Mission Donation Programme allows UN Permanent Missions and NGOs to request recycled computer equipment for their use, thus supporting a greener ICT operation for the United Nations Secretariat. Since the programme’s establishment, more than 10,348 devices have been donated to over 122 countries and NGO’s.

The ICT governance and project management frameworks are two key elements of the United Nations ICT strategy described in A/62/793. The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) recently launched an ePortfolio tool to support both of these ICT strategic initiatives. In February 2010, representatives from the Project Management Office and Field Systems Service of OICT conducted a training of the ePortfolio application tool at the United Nations Logistics Base (UNLB) in Brindisi, Italy.

Until recently, low bandwidth and expensive satellite-based communication characterized services provided by the Information and Communications Technology Service (ICTS) of the UN Office at Nairobi (UNON).  Providing Internet and videoconferencing services for more than 5,000 staff in the UN complex had been particularly challenging.

Now, thanks to the undersea fibre optic cable which was opened to Eastern Africa in July 2009, the digital divide between duty stations in developed countries and that of UNON is history. Since November 2009, UNON-ICTS has commissioned and implemented a 155 megabits per second (Mbps) Internet Service Provider (ISP) gateway, providing a super highway for voice, video and data communication to all of its clients.

In an effort to comply with international domain-naming conventions and UN policies for branding, starting 19 November 2009, the UN Call Management will henceforth be known as "myUNcalls".

Also on the same date, icall.un.org will be replaced by myUNcalls.un.org.

"myUNcalls", the UN Telephone Usage Management System, was designed to help staff members at Headquarters manage and stay on top of their telephone usage for international and long distance calls.

Member States are the United Nations.

Their work in the principal organs determines the work of the Organization throughout the world, and yet finding out exactly who said what has until now required an in-depth understanding of the Organization.

A new project, UN Member States: On the Record, makes information easily accessible that was once complicated and difficult to find.