March 2012

Ernesto Baca joins team as interim Project Director

November 2011

Procurement of vendor for "build" phase begins

September 2011

Third progress report of the Secretary General is published (A/66/381)
Umoja reports delays and a new timeline with a revised its implementation approach. The system will be rolled out in two phases:

Umoja Foundation – Deployment: 2013 - 2014

• Support IPSAS requirements
• Business processes include: finance, assets, procurement,property, equipment and inventory management

Umoja Extension – Deployment: late 2014 - 2015

• HR and travel, budget formulation – results based management, force planning, demand planning, logistics execution, conference and event management, document production and distribution, full grants management, and commercial activities

May 2011

• The Umoja Steering Committee approves a revised implementation approach.

Late 2010

• Final Design Phase kicked off
• Process presentations – Executive Solution Summaries (ESS) – developed, setting the foundation for completion of final design

September 2010

Second progress report of the Secretary General (A/65/389)

• Brought two issues to attention of the GA:
  • Prolonged negotiations to procure preferred ERP software package (contract with SAP not signed until June 2010)
  • Prolonged recruitment and difficulty finding certain skill sets
• Endorsed by ACABQ (A/65/576) and the GA (A/RES/65/259)

June 2010

United Nations and SAP Public Services signed a contract for the provision of the core software for Umoja.

October 2009

First progress report of the Secretary-General (A/64/380) on Umoja delivered

• Endorsement by ACABQ (A/64/7/Add.9) and the GA (A/RES/64/243) revealed commitment of Member States to the Secretary-General's vision for Umoja.

Early 2009

• Full-time project team formed
• Governance structure and budget created
• Current policies, procedures, and processes reviewed by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
• GA progress reporting framework developed

January 2009

Steering Committee endorsed the name "Umoja" (Swahili for "unity").

December 2008

GA approved the UN's administrative reform initiative, what is to be known as "Umoja", in Resolution 63/262.

December 2007

Detailed functional requirements completed (as they were understood at the time).

March 2006 – December 2007

As approved by the General Assembly (GA) in Resolution 60/283, small core team of 16 UN staff began fundamental activities (i.e. resourcing, functional requirements, business process re-engineering).

• Representative staff from Headquarters (HQ), Offices Away from HQ (OAHs), Regional Commissions and Field Missions contributed to requirements-gathering
• Requirements for cost accounting, IPSAS, recruitment, procurement and associated management reporting
• Scope refinement and business process re-engineering activities commenced

March 2006

Secretary-General proposed replacing the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS), Galaxy and other stand-alone IT systems with a single, integrated platform to support full range of UN management administrative functions (A/60/692 and Corr. 1, Proposal 10).