ICT News and Announcements

13 December 2022

The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) and the Directorate-General for Informatics of the European Commission (DG DIGIT) today announced in an award ceremony (video) the winners of the “Smart Cities” challenges, the second innovation event from the Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG) initiative.

28 November 2022

The United Nations Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) is pleased to announce that it has joined the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA).

OICT hosted several successful open source-based initiatives in the areas of peace and security, development and human rights. By joining the Alliance, OICT will not only increase its potential to implement and develop digital public goods, but, most importantly, collaborate and share this vision with renowned stakeholders.

16 November 2022

Today is GIS (geographic information system) Day, which commemorates geospatial data and technology and promotes awareness of Geographic Information Systems or Geographic Information Sciences (GIS).  Geospatial, or location, data can provide insights to challenges the world faces in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. For the second straight year, the United Nations Geospatial team is celebrating GIS day by preparing maps on each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

07 November 2022

The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) supports the United Nations and its partners’ goals of ensuring that no one is left behind, as envisioned in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, by leveraging the power of technology to help solve the world’s problems.

03 November 2022

Originally published on the Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) programme website, this story map details how the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) performed a rapid geospatial assessment using earth observation data and the common geographies collected in the context of the SALB programme. Read more.

03 October 2022

The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT), the European Commission Directorate-General for Informatics (EC DG--DIGIT) and OpenStreetMap (OSM) have launched the second series of innovation challenges in the framework of the Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG) initiative.

25 August 2022

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is developing at an exceedingly rapid pace, and it is important that we adopt AI intentionally. Young people today will likely live in a future world in which AI will be pervasive. They deserve a say in what this future will look like.

25 July 2022

With 322 delegates in attendance, the 6th International Partnership for Technology in Peacekeeping Symposium (6PTPS), held in the City of Tshwane (Pretoria), Republic of South Africa, 21-24 June, was the largest Symposium to date.  This annual event is a joint initiative of the Department of Operational Support and the Office of Information and Communications Technology to showcase field-oriented technology initiatives, and to generate feedback and discussion with interested Member States.

01 July 2022

The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) and the European Commission Directorate-General for Informatics (EC DG--DIGIT) announced the five winners of the Get plugged into Education! hackathon, the first innovation event from the Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG) initiative, on 30 June.  

07 June 2022

The Department of Operational Support (DOS) and the Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT), in cooperation with the Government of the Republic of South Africa, will be hosting the Sixth Partnership for Technology in Peacekeeping International Symposium in the City of Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa, from 21 to 24 June 2022. This event was originally planned for 2020 but was postponed due to COVID-19. This will be the first time the Symposium is held in Africa.

26 May 2022

On Wednesday 25 May, the Secretariat of the United Nations was informed that multiple dignitaries received unsolicited messages purporting to originate from UN senior management. These communications took the form of "Signal" messages and fraudulently stated that they were to inform the recipient that a senior management official was reaching out to them using their “personal number”. 

09 May 2022

Following the successful implementation of the Field Remote Infrastructure Monitoring (FRIM) (Phase 1) in the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) last February, UNGSC’s Unite FRIM team organized an awareness workshop at the request of mission leadership.

The Unite FRIM is an innovative, operational planning and oversight platform that enables UN entities to monitor infrastructure systems.

04 May 2022

The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) is pleased to announce that, in collaboration with the Directorate-General for Informatics of the European Commission (DG DIGIT) and Moodle, it is launching a series of innovation challenges in the framework of the “Open Source Software for Sustainable Development Goals (OSS4SDG)” initiative.
 

22 March 2022

Last November, United Nations Global Service Centre (UNGSC) and the United Nations Regional Service Centre in Entebbe (RSCE) field technology trainers conducted an intensive Micro Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) training course for the Mozambique National Institute of Disaster Management (INGD) and the Associação Moçambicana de Veículos Aéreos Não Tripulados (AMOVANT), among others.

UAS can be used for search- and-rescue operations, to monitor and assess critical infrastructure, to provide disaster relief by transporting emergency medical supplies to remote locations.

25 January 2022

The United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL) website is an online collection of texts of United Nations resolutions, documents and publications concerning the question of Palestine, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and other issues related to the Middle East situation.

With such a high volume of current and historical content, finding information can be challenging.

30 November 2021

GIS Day is observed on 17 November to commemorate spatial and geographic technologies and to promote awareness of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) or Geographic Information sciences.

28 October 2021

Youth development is a cross-cutting theme in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. With the launch of Youth2030 in 2018, the United Nations strategy on youth, the United Nations has explicitly highlighted the need for expanded global, regional and country-level action to address the needs, build the agency, and advance the rights of youth across the world, ensuring we leave no one behind. 

01 September 2021

By definition, open source development is collaborative, inclusive and revolutionary—and open software has become ubiquitous. Whenever we are online, we are benefiting from open software. It powers the cloud, and is in supercomputers, blockchain, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence.

27 August 2021

The Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) and the Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) announced the winner of the recent Unite Ideas / Financial Crime Data Challenge, which sought a model for financial crime data correlation. The winning solution titled “Preventing the Financing of Terrorism by Engineering an ML Model with Financial Crime Data” was provided by 

02 August 2021

The 2030 Agenda recognizes that the spread of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and global interconnectedness has great potential to accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, to bridge the digital divide, and to develop knowledge societies.