Data Sharing

1 July 2021

Christina Goodness, Chief, Information Management Unit, UN Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations

One year and 15 minutes later, I stepped away from the nurse’s table. I waited to see if there would be any vaccine reaction. After a year of remote work and crisis response for COVID-19, I sat there and took a deep breath, listening to the clicking of keyboards as the medical staff recorded the data and murmured amongst themselves.

25 May 2021

By Kyoung-Soo Eom, Chief of Geospatial Information Section, Technology Operations Service, Operations Support Division, OICT

Since the establishment of the United Nations, cartography and geospatial information have been an important component of the Organization. In 1948, the Committee of Experts on Cartography sought to answer two questions:

1. What should the United Nations do to stimulate and assist Member States in the development of the mapping sciences?
2. What sort of cartographic service did the United Nations need to carry out this program, for its own operations, and in its relations with the specialized agencies?

12 April 2021

By Stefan Lemm, former Head, Military Operations Unit, OICT

Data Privacy and Protection is one of the key aspects of the Secretary-General’s Data Strategy. It is clear that protecting people from indiscriminate data collection is important because it might result in data misuse, for instance, by businesses. But a potentially more dangerous scenario would be that data collected in good faith ends up in the hands of ill-meaning actors who intend to intimidate or even threaten the victim's personal safety.

8 September 2020 

A Q&A with Melanie A. Mecca, Chief Executive Officer, DataWise

The scope of information that the UN defines, produces and uses is vast and complex. In June, the UN published the Secretary-General’s "Data Strategy for Action by Everyone, Everywhere" – a roadmap for data-driven change in the Organization.

4 August 2020

By Lambert Hogenhout, Chief of Data Analytics and Innovation, OICT

Databases have been around a long time, since the 1960s. Times when the world was less complicated and less inter-connected, at least in a data sense. Traditional databases focused on "things" with properties, like employees with birthdates and addresses and salaries. Even though they are called relational databases, the relationships were secondary.

8 July 2020

By Wafa Aboul Hosn, Chief of Economic Statistics, and Juraj Riecan, Director of Statistics, Information Society and Technology Cluster, Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia

Data and statistics are no longer the purview of researchers and academics. This has become most evident with the COVID-19 pandemic, as people worldwide are following daily statistics on confirmed cases, deaths, and PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing, and governments put in place policies to contain the spread of the disease among their population.

22 May 2020

By Mahsa Hedayati and Amanda Wang, Information System Officers, Policy, Strategy and Governance Division, OICT

The topic of privacy is gaining momentum in the mainstream big data discourse. Governments, policy makers, businesses, academics, and civil society are increasingly reflecting on how to strike the right balance between the potential benefits of exponential data collection and discovery, on the one hand, and the protection and privacy of data subjects, on the other hand.  

24 April 2020

By Syed Ahmed, Senior Manager of Business Systems, Operations Support Division, UN Office of Information and Communications Technology

My team and I lead self-service analytics initiatives in the United Nations and our work has helped transform the Organization’s approach to data. I believe that as the UN continues to make analytics platforms available to mostly non-technical business users, the value proposition for effective data governance is imperative.

21 February 2020

By Francesca Perucci, Chief of the Development Data and Outreach Branch and Luis Gonzalez Morales, Chief of the Web Development and Data Visualization Unit, Statistics Division, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs 

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts data and statistics at the center of national and global action. But to unleash the full potential of data to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), all stakeholders must be more collaborative and integrated. This is because no single entity can control all the data that is required to implement and monitor progress towards achieving the Global Goals and leaving no one behind.

23 January 2020 

By Greg Ogolla, Data Visualization and Reporting Lead, Policy, Strategy and Governance Division, Office of Information and Communications Technology

The Office of Information and Communications Technology’s Policy, Strategy and Governance Division (PSGD) is responsible for developing Secretariat-wide policy, strategy and governance standards for information and communications technology (ICT).