On 24 December 2008, the General Assembly (GA) adopted a resolution on Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), concluding its review of three major ICT-related reports:
(1) ICT Strategy for the Secretariat (A/62/793 + Add.1 + Corr.1),
(2) Enterprise Systems - ERP, ECM and CRM (A/62/510/Rev.1), and
(3) Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (A/62/477).
The text of the resolution itself (A/RES/63/262), which has not been published yet, is contained in draft form as document A/63/648/Add.3, draft res. III (also not published yet). Additional information is available in a press release covering the meeting which lasted into the early morning hours.
A summary of this key GA resolution on ICT is as follows.
ICT Strategy and Governance
In an effort to provide strong, central leadership for the establishment and implementation of organization-wide ICT standards and activities, the GA decided to establish the Office of ICT (OICT) as an independent organizational unit, reporting directly to the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. The OICT will be headed by the Chief Information Technology Officer and all post and non-post resources previously located in the Department of Management’s (DM) Information Technology Services Division (ITSD) will now be transferred to the OICT. Ten posts and some non-post resources from the Department of Field Support’s ICT Division will also be transferred to the OICT.
The establishment of the OICT will provide a solid foundation for supporting more efficient utilization of resources, the modernization of systems and further improvements to ICT services.
The position of Chief Technology Information Officer was originally created by the General Assembly in July 2006 (related press release). Assistant-Secretary-General Choi Soon-hong has held the post since September 2007 (related iSeek story).
Enterprise Systems
The GA approved the governance framework for the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project as well as $20 million to be spent in 2008/2009 to continue the ERP effort. ERP is a UN-wide initiative to improve the processes that manage financial, human and material resources, and place them on a single, global information system, thus replacing IMIS and over 200 individual applications.
The GA also recognized the benefits of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Customer Relations Management (CRM) systems, which will enhance official document management and relationships with clients and stakeholders. As such, the GA requested the Secretary-General to implement these systems throughout the organization, and to provide an update on progress and any additional resource requirements during the GA’s 64th session in September 2009. An additional $2 million were approved to meet resource requirements for ECM implementation.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
The GA recognized the importance of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (DR-BC) and encouraged the consolidation of systems and data centres, to strengthen this capacity. It stressed the need to ensure a robust and fault-tolerant infrastructure to deal with all possible disruptions.
As such, the GA has requested detailed proposals for a unified DR-BC approach for the entire Secretariat at its 64th session.
While the resolution approved the proposal to establish a secondary active telecommunications facility for peacekeeping in Valencia, Spain, it deferred a decision on DR-BC operations for non-peacekeeping operations at the same site to a later date.
It also approved $2.5 million for commencing DR-BC activities for UNHQ and Offices Away from Headquarters and $7.1 million for seed equipment at the North Lawn data centre. The GA also requested the Secretary-General to submit a new proposal for the secondary data centre at UNHQ, including risk mitigation measures during the migration of the primary data centre to the North Lawn.
