UNMIL hosts Umoja design sessions

The UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) hosted a delegation of designers from 12 October to 6 November 2009. No, not fashion designers as you may be thinking, but rather process designers who were very busy taking a closer look at "to be" or future processes for eventual inclusion in Umoja.

As you may already know, Umoja is the cornerstone of UN administrative reform - supported by a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that will help integrate the management of human, financial, and physical resources of the Organization.

The Monrovia design sessions brought experts in process re-engineering together with experienced and knowledgeable staff members serving as "Subject Matter Experts" (SMEs). The UN Secretariat design sessions hosted by UNMIL were organized to look at specific aspects of supply chain (receipt and distribution and management of assets) and central support services, along with some technical functions.

All told, UNMIL hosted thirty-two Umoja design sessions with more than sixty participants contributing to the sessions. Each session was prepared and facilitated by an Umoja team comprising UN staff members and system integration consultants serving with the project. Participants worked diligently to bring their experiences and skills to the challenging task of defining streamlined processes and leading practices for the future.

The UNMIL Director of Mission Support and the Chief of Administrative Services were among the Mission's senior staff who opened the sessions. In addition to UNMIL staff, SMEs came from the UN Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI) and the UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC).

On-line participation also enabled SMEs and others from the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), MONUC and UN Headquarters in New York to participate remotely.

The Monrovia sessions allowed for a field perspective for input into Umoja's continuing effort to cover the entire scope of administrative reform. With this objective in mind, experts attending the sessions in Monrovia went through the current "as is" processes in order to create "to be" processes that are simplified, streamlined and standardized. In doing so, participants held lively discussions on business requirements, risks and other related issues while working simultaneously with process diagrams to map the future.

Feedback from the sessions indicates that the exercise was extremely productive and that participants found the sessions useful to the future work of the Organization. In the words of one participant, "the design session has been very well planned and executed and many 'as is' (processes) addressed to help improve the 'to be' development." Another participant thought that "it was very essential to ask staff from different missions and crosscheck ideas and processes to make the design session a success…" and yet another participant expressed the view that "this project 'Umoja' will change a lot of aspects of how we work in United Nations and it will help to improve resources that UN uses to execute their mandate especially in field mission(s) of DPKO."

Contributions made by participants were documented and compiled into "to be" process maps that will be validated by designated business owners in the months ahead.

With respect to design sessions, the Umoja team takes seriously the old tailor's maxim of "measure twice, cut once" so as to minimize waste and rework.

The Umoja team, therefore, appreciates the work completed at the Monrovia sessions and extends its thanks to all participants for a job well done.

You can learn more about Umoja or become a part of the Umoja network by visiting us at http://www.unumoja.org.

Originally published on iSeek on Friday, 19 November 2009, Monrovia

Umoja detailed design sessions are underway

Umoja, a continuous administrative reform initiative within the UN Secretariat, including Peacekeeping, has entered its Detailed Design Phase. UN offices in Geneva, Monrovia and New York are hosting expert staff members who are working with the Umoja team to design future business processes that will improve the way we work.

In the absence of an integrated solution for managing human, financial, and material resources, the UN currently delivers on its mandate thanks to the enormous efforts of dedicated, experienced, and hard-working staff. Even so, opportunities are missed due to outdated practices and lack of information.

In June 2009, experts from Headquarters, Field Offices and Peacekeeping Missions worked with the Umoja team to identify "pain points" or issues with our current processes.

During the Detailed Design Phase now underway, Umoja is addressing these issues with the help of UN staff members who are highly experienced in the areas of Central Support Services, Human Resources, Finance, and Supply Chain.

Over 450 staff members are participating in 140 Design Sessions, representing 25 different duty stations throughout the Secretariat. These experts are working with the Umoja team to streamline administrative processes, resolve issues, and design solutions that are responsive to current and future UN needs and suitable for global implementation. The outputs from these sessions will be presented to managers for validation and form the basis of Umoja's final design.

The goal of this effort is to ensure that Umoja provides the best solution possible for the UN Secretariat – designed by experts, supported by management, and welcomed by all.

For more information on Umoja, and to become a part of the Umoja network, please visit our web site at http://www.unumoja.org.

Originally published on iSeek on Friday, 30 October 2009, New York

Fifth Committee briefed on Umoja

On 6 October 2009, during a closed meeting of the Fifth Committee of the General Assembly, an informal briefing on Umoja was provided by Ms. Angela Kane, Under-Secretary-General for Management and Mr. Paul van Essche, Umoja Project Director, in which they introduced the draft report: First Progress Report on the Enterprise Resource Planning Project and Revised Estimates under Section 28A, and under the Peacekeeping Support Account (A/64/380).

Ms. Kane provided a concise summary of the changes that have been introduced in the new report, bringing attention to the critical state of the organization's way of doing business and the pressing need to bring about lasting change and improve our processes:

"Challenges are acute across the Organization and especially in the field. This reality jeopardizes our operability, our accountability and thereby our credibility and reputation.

The time is overdue for a renewal that will bring processes, procedures, skills and systems up to levels that are considered minimal in other professional environments."

Mr. Van Essche wrapped up the session, summarizing the primary goals of Umoja, providing tangible examples for the delegates of the Fifth Committee, and finally driving home the key message:

"In short, the recipe for success is equal parts improvements in processes, the skills of people and the use of technology. People, process, technology. Umoja redefines all three. If you take one thing away from this briefing, please let this be it. This is the essence of Umoja."

Umoja to bring great benefits to Peacekeeping

The Umoja Project will provide a number of opportunities for improving the way resources are managed in the United Nations. This article will look at some of the benefits Umoja will bring to peace operations. In 2007, Peacekeeping oversaw 114,577 personnel in 16 missions, operated more than 18,000 vehicles and 210 aircraft and ran 20 military hospitals and 230 medical clinics.

Field missions bring people, money and equipment together to deliver mandated outcomes in the host country. Unfortunately this is currently being done in the absence of critical technological support and necessary global integrated information. The entrenched silo approach creates inefficiencies and duplication of effort, which in turn increases the time and money required to deploy the right resources, to the right places, at the right time and at the right cost. This situation combined with the tough physical conditions of field missions further exasperate the day-to-day challenges faced by staff members and adversely affects morale.

Umoja will also provide integrated information for personnel and financial reporting. As a result, the ability to get people and materials on the ground, as well as sustain and manage a mission, will improve. Tools will now be available to track and manage transportation, movement of goods and procurement. With better information and more responsive procurement, the time it takes to deploy a mission will be considerably reduced.

Umoja will help by supporting business processes, re-engineered by subject matter experts working with the Umoja team, to eliminate unnecessary process steps and multiple manual data entries. The planning process will vastly improve. Increased accuracy and visibility of resources will lead to a reduction in waste and obsolescence as the identification of surplus resources will facilitate tracking and redeployment on a global basis.

Missions can experience difficulty assessing effectiveness, given that they are often operating in a vacuum. Being able to obtain good information in a timely manner will improve the accuracy and forecasting of budgets. Discrepancies between approved budgets and actual spending should diminish.

Umoja will provide a powerful means to manage resources more effectively and responsively in often fast-paced and challenging environments.

Umoja - a new way of working together

While the external environment has changed dramatically since the United Nations was founded in 1945, many of our internal ways of working are based on practices from the 1940s and '50s, supported, in some cases, by technology from the 1980s and '90s. As a result, we sometimes find it difficult to do our jobs as efficiently and effectively as we could.

As you are aware, the Secretary-General is committed to the continuous modernization and administrative reform of our organization. Umoja is at the heart of this Secretariat-wide effort. Umoja means "unity" in Swahili, and the name reflects its goals: to improve our business processes; to align them with commonly accepted best practice; and to support this with a global information management platform. All of which, will enable us to work together more effectively on behalf of our constituents and beneficiaries.

We have launched this website to provide you with general information about Umoja – the project mandate, background, purpose, progress and so on. More importantly, this website will be a two-way conversation, a virtual space for us to communicate with each other. In the coming weeks, we will add more content and launch exciting interactive features that will enable us to engage with you, the staff of the global Secretariat, in making the goals of the Umoja Project a reality.

The success of Umoja will depend to a large extent on the level and quality of engagement of the user community within the UN. The deployment of Umoja involves consulting with (and later training) staff, implementing streamlined and integrated business processes, and using modern technology to achieve greater efficiency and better service.

Welcome to Umoja. We hope you will visit us on a regular basis and participate in this exciting effort to improve the management of resources so that we can support the UN mandate more responsively and effectively. In the meantime, we invite you to learn more about Umoja and read some of the past articles published on iSeek.