The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Okay. We can start.
Welcome to session 50 on Digital Innovation and Transformation in the UN System. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening, depending on where you are located. Welcome to our audience here and welcome to our audience online. My name is Dino Cataldo Dell'Accio. Here today with my colleagues and friends from UNHCR, UNICEF, UNJSPF. Here with Michael Walton and UNJSPF and international computing center. The sequence of presentation is as followed. Mike will present the strategies and then with Fui Meng Liew and representing the UNICEF experience and I will make the experience of the UNICC mention fund.
Last but not least we have the director of UNICC is actually supporting us and the entire UN System in our efforts to implement digital Innovation and Transformation in the UN System. Without further ado I will give the floor to Mike and monitoring the chat for any questions you may have. Mike.
>> MICHAEL WALTON: Thank you, Dino. I was told I spoke too fast when I did another session. Please wave at me when I am moving too fast. I'm Mike. I do the Digital Service in the UN agency. Glad to share the experiences.
We've been in a bit of a journey when we did lock down and starting to define digital strategies. We've been working through the digital strategies all through the pandemic. When we decided to do it and one of the things that the high commissioner said to us was, this has to be designed from the ground up. It has to be designed by the regions, and it has to be a framework. It can't be a very restrictive strategy because every region is different.
We had a fantastic response from all of the regions. They ran workshops locally. We feel at the end we got something locally relevant to people.
I won't play the video, but just to remind people about really the last ten years in terms of the number of forcibly displaced and kind of to state UNHCR mandate. We've seen lots of different conflicts in the world from America to the Asia region. You can see there the number of forcibly displaced and it touches on our countries and our lives. There is a huge need out there. Huge need to meet the needs of these people and to work with them to help them rebuild their lives. This is Jessie. She is from DRC. I met her in refugee camp. This is five to six years ago. She has now moved on. She was running a coding center with very little resources. She has a generator. She had a team. She had some laptops. They were developing android coding apps for the local community. It was really amazing to see what they've been able to do with such little resource. It has actually grown much bigger now. Now there are big coding centers. There is an initiative called I Am Code. It focuses on female coding skills. This is in its minority. We need to see examples on local skills and investment.
Don't worry about reading this slide. It is our digital strategy on a page. I will talk you through it to say what we've tried to do is across digital strategy on every part of the organization. Again, although we talk to regions we also talk to all the divisions to make sure their needs are met.
I will walk you through this very briefly. The first part of the strategy is digital empowerment to make sure that the refugees have the skills and tools to engage in the digital world. Many of us take the digital access for granted and we can do many things. For many the gaps still exist. How can we address that gap to rebuild lives. Many refugees spend youthful years in refugee camps and to help them build further.
We have the strategies looking internally. How can we work better and be for effective as an organization. I will go into those two pillars. It is important to match what we're saying externally and what we're doing internally too.
At the end maybe we have discussion time on commonality. There is so many common need across all the conversations I've heard. I'll focus on a couple of them in a minute. Capacity. How do we work together in multi‑stakeholders with our users? How can we be efficient with the digital tools that we use? How can we be effective and reuse and share and don't waste valuable resources?
How can we make sure with one hand we provide good and in the other hand inadvertently cause harm? How can we be good in making sure that we do no harms? Ethics is going to be our focus next year. If anyone is interested in being involved we're looking to do the ethical approach with human tech with other stakeholders.
With accessibility. We've worked a bit with Microsoft and Google, and we have met with a group of refugees in London and Google headquarters. Thank you for helping facilitate that meeting. As well as Google and Microsoft there is so many other implications being developed. How do we make sure that the users with visual and hearing impairments and other forms of disability can be catered for in the digital world? We've done work and a big piece of work in accessibility. It is a common need. It has come up again and again and how can we have an approach of digital accessibility to be more effective and not reinvent the wheel?
My teams mantra is engage, engage, engage. Engage with the communities. Make sure that delivering something that is relevant to them. Two of my team members have been to Iraq and Uganda and make sure that the prototype is meeting their expectations. Really design use for feedback.
Digital inclusion is a critical first pillar of the strategy. I won't go too much into digital inclusion. It has been such a key focus this week. I've heard every session of digital inclusion. It starts with connectivity. We have a refugee connectivity. When you get that connectivity what can you do with it? How with you learn? How can you train? How can you get work? How can you be financially included? For us it is connectivity. Connectivity is talked about, but what about all the other things that have come?
I've heard one conversation on age. I sat with my 94‑year‑old father‑in‑law before I came here to use his mobile phone and call for services and safety if something happened to him. He wouldn't be able to do that without support. I think when we're talking about inclusion we're talking about elderly people that don't have the skills and have the access. Also that's completely equal across the gender divide as well.
So the second piece is digital services. What we said is, okay. When people get connectivity the ability for us to provide services to individuals is going to be much more effective and efficient. We're now building a digital Gateway, and one stop shop to access appointments, work, and essential services. That is the first stage of development. However, we heard a lot about risk this week. With connectivity comes the risks and threats of being online. We have a huge digital protection. I will talk more about that. That covers everything from hateful content. Imagine being a refugee from UK and you're met online with hateful comments or with misinformation. It is a real issue for us. We want to make sure to find a way of addressing that.
Communicating. How we communicate with each other? How we communicate with our partners is a big pillar. How do we use the communication tools to be more effective? How do we work digitally? This is not a digital picture. We were using internet of things and monitoring for our water deliveries to make sure what the water was and we knew when the water is being made and use technology to help us inform and send data back for that. Really useful interesting examples.
Dino, please tell me if I need to speed up. Okay.
The other thing we talked about is innovation. What we have is fantastic innovation team in UNHCR. They have a digital innovation fund. There is a refugee fund and data fund.
We have a certain amount of money allocated to the innovation fund. Refugee led organizations too. If you have a good idea and want to test it, how can they get funding for it and do a pilot and a prototype? It is a really good mechanism. We find that we have 50 or 100 different applications across the funds every year. Some of them fail and that is the nature of innovation and some of them with will succeed and that can help us move forward.
This is just a picture of our refugee services mobile app that I mentioned that is being tested in Iraq. Refugees can arrange appointments and documents. Imagine when there is a sudden onset of emergency and sudden need to be registered as a refugee. With the mobile app we can relieve that. We're not trying to take away face‑to‑face contact. We're trying to speed up registration so people can access essential services and information as quickly as possible.
This is our help website. When I arrived we didn't have a help website. Now we have 14 million force ably and access and how to access essential services in the country they're in. It is becoming and now have pretty much all country operations covered by this. When things suddenly change in a serious situation and Ukraine situation it is important to provide to people and refugees. We have a WhatsApp service and engaging refugees using WhatsApp. When Ukraine happened WhatsApp wasn't the formal communication. We needed to look at all the messaging platforms to work on and how to be more effective.
We work really closely with partners. Some of whom have been here this week. With Meta and Google and EU. How can we work with them and adapt business practice as well so that actually business practice changes for some of these companies and also do not harm when they're operating.
Just a little thing around hate speech. Really we've done a two year project funded by the European Union. Now we're talking about integrity and how can we make sure it is entrusted and access to that information is not restricted? We've been work with the Norwegian government ‑‑ (audio is garbled). Safe information world out there. I don't think I can play this video. It is connected. Is it possible to play that video on the (audio is garbled). We may lose sound. That's fine. Don't worry about the sound.
AI generated video that is playing out. You can tell it was by AI because actually AI is quite bad at creating the letters and the acronyms of UNHCR. Actually it is never the case. It is completely fabricated content. How do we go up against AI to work with AI and restrict AI to make sure that we don't get (audio is garbled). Operation and impact and Indonesia. We have to be really careful at the time.
Okay. So then we actually some of the questions that we want to ask. Actually many refugees have faced and seen it in their own channels and effected by that. How can we make sure that we're addressing the hate speech and isn't causing harm? You can see the psychological harm and social harm and (audio garbled). Coming to a close now. Things are becoming digitized. If you are looking for safety, how do we make sure that safety is really there and the technology that can be really used for good is also not used in the wrong way. We're looking and keeping an eye on technology.
(Audio is garbled).
Data is really essential. I went to great presentation in data improvement and do predictive analysis there. Again, I won't play this video. Again, if you have the deck afterwards you can see that. How can we work in the spirit of the digital compact on common areas? Ethics? A common approach to ethical approaches. Gender. How can we really make sure to include both gender and also age as I mentioned in the beginning. Accessibility. Let's not reinvent the wheel and create many different training courses on accessibility. There only needs to be one that we can share and several. These things can be adapted.
Policy. Again lots of discussion on policy today and standards. That's it for me. Over to Mike.
>> MICHAEL WALTON: Thank you so much. Very impressive and the amount of scope of purview.
We are now going to pass the floor to our colleague Fui Meng Liew. Chief of Digital resilience in UNICEF. Fui Meng Liew is going to make a presentation on digital resilience for impact for children. The floor is yours Fui Meng Liew. Thank you.
>> FUI MENG LIEW: Thank you, Dino. First of all, can you hear me loud and clear?
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Yes. We can hear you well. If you can share your screen for the presentation. It is not shown on the main screen.
>> FUI MENG LIEW: Let me do that now. It says I have to replace Mike is sharing right now. Please let me know if you can see it.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Not yet. Let me switch.
>> FUI MENG LIEW: What about now?
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Okay. Is it in presentation mode? Slideshow? Okay. Perfect. It's clear now.
>> FUI MENG LIEW: Yeah, is it clear?
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: It is.
>> FUI MENG LIEW: Thank you, Dino. Dino, we are hearing online from the room a bit choppy the voice. Feel free to stop me if in the room you don't hear me very clearly.
First of all, I want to thank Mike for doing such a good presentation about digital transformation and innovation in the impact for refugee. Today for now I'm going to take us to another turn in terms of how do we see digital innovation and transformation for impact with children.
As an introduction my name is Fui Meng Liew. I am the Chief of Digital Center of Excellence of UNICEF. I'm based in Nairobi. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everyone today.
As some of you might have known UNICEF is a child's right organization. From our perspective we look at the holistic view of how UNICEF as a UN agency can propel and impact for children around the world.
Today in this conversations that I'm having with you all we're going to focus on the digital resilience framework that UNICEF put together to really look in the digital age how do we make sure that the rights for children, in terms of accessing data and digital rights are being protected along the way.
So it is goes without saying that digital is intertwined in UNICEF's DNA. In UNICEF we are actually guided every four years by our strategic plan. Digital transformation is in our current strategic plan four year from 20222025. The entire organization looks for change strategy for us to change our way of delivering services and impact for children. It is not only that. In the UN organization most recently in September we also see that the approval and, you know, launch on the pact of the future actually triggered a lot of conversation and global digital compact bind us on the ambition for digital.
Digital is not only really happening in UNICEF, and it is really happening around the world, and we are living in a digital world. What we are also seeing most importantly is that our stakeholders over 190 governments and territories companies and UNICEF worked closely with, we are seeing and seeing them to say they need us to stepping up on how to do digital delivery for services and any of the results that we deliver for children.
Just a little bit of data. Over the last two years UNICEF around the world we actually got successfully got a sneak peek about what are the digital interventions that we are hearing from the country offices. As I mentioned we have a global footprint. We have over 160 countries and we're in seven regions. What we're seeing is that through our knowledge management platform we're looking at 1,600 interventions. Digital innovations and digital ideas and digital interventions that scale massively in the country with the government. This is not a small number in all ways and means. This really strengthen our belief that digital is intertwined in UNICEF. How do we see digital is important in child's rights? Being a child's right organization.
The way we look at it is the health sanitation and so forth. That reflects into a journey of a child from birth to a child getting registered with a legal ID. A child being vaccinated. Receive the protection and receive the protection all the way from zero age all the way to when they become a young adult.
There are some disturbing numbers that we're seeing so far. Let's take the example from legal identity perspective. A child is born, and we know that from our interventions and data collections and all the government agencies that in Sub Saharan Africa over 90 million children is not registered. If a child is not registered that truncates the potential of the child. He/she will not be able to successfully get vaccinated and not most likely get the right education. And gray zone where we cannot protect the child.
The fact that the child is being registered and the child is getting the right services to us is really, really important. What does it mean with digital? With the notion of governments of getting more and more digital and seeing a proliferation of digital solutions and public goods in the market we do see a strong need for UNICEF to come out and working with the likes of this digital solution providers. Such As Digital Health Information the strict health information that is managed by the university and open SPP and is about social protection and is championed by some of the big member stakes and Germany. A chase management system and GIGA. GIGA is an interesting one. The way that we see digital is also importance of having connectivity in every school and health services.
Giga is a partnership with ITU to really connect every school. That is a very ambitious goal. It goes to show that digital is important for child rights. We do see that. For us we have to come out and really support this cause.
I just want to spend a little bit of time of not only digital is important for child rights, how UNICEF walked the talk and enabling the public goods in the digital ecosystem to deliver results for children. A little bit of background of digital public goods. There is an Alliance Public Good Alliance and UNICEF is in alliance. We have been really strong in working with different key partners from the Norwegian and so forth to really realize the DPG and making sure that the solutions (audio is garbled). Give countries greater control and how they build and enhance the infrastructure. Giving them the control and offer implementation.
I hope the room can hear me. Okay. I continue. Also offer cheaper and faster implementation. Last but not catalyze and sustain the work on digital public goods. On the righthand side you see the UNICEF how we walk the talk on investing in not only the key principles but investing in the public goods and ranging and platforms (audio is cutting off). All the way from they cover different needs for impact for children.
We live in the digital world. By design we are vulnerable. From the way that we see it, not only cyber-attacks is everywhere. Cyber-attacks impact UN agencies as well as it impacts private sector and government agencies. We take it seriously that it is our accountability and reasonability to make sure that we have a way to ensure data, and the rights are fully respected.
In that notion we started the framework of digital resilience which the core objective is to keep the data right and keep data secure and use it ethically. In this realm we are talking about the data of children as well. In most of the time they could be the most vulnerable. They could be the most vulnerable group because they are not the ones in the group to make decision.
I'm still hearing some sound from I think IGF 7 here. I want to make sure that everyone can hear me. How does data resilience work?
It actually has three key pillars or three key elements. One about data protection and security and third is responsible data for children.
In data protection we ensure to ensure the rights and why personal data's is being collected and give consent to its use. A lot of the countries is clear data protection law and so forth. From UNICEF perspective we want to also keep the standard to make sure that we walk the talk on making sure data protection is clearly and accurate in UNICEF and with the work that we do on the ground.
Information security is to really make sure that we introduce the technical controls on who can access the data and when and protect the data that is in our custody. The third pillar about responsible data for children is really about ensuring the adoption of the highest ethical standards and we're talking about data for children of children. This can be really sensitive data and would not actually see and do this right.
>> IGF 7 is unmuted. We need to be unmuted?
>> FUI MENG LIEW: The fact that we need to reduce the misuse of data so that there is no misuse of data and use the data to its maximum potential is in the pillar for children. How do we put the framework at use? There are multiple channels that we are putting at use.
First is integrating the resilience in the technology playbook. Technology playbook is UNICEF way to comprehensive guide for a program and technology for development colleagues on the ground to implement digital programming solutions. We make a very, very strong effort in integrating the digital resilience framework as an assessment into the playbook so that we make sure that it is actually being fully utilized or initiated. That is how we put it in use.
The second part of how we put it in use is the need by strengthening the resilience framework through global partnership. We have been working with different partners outside of UNICEF. We will open for more feedback from this work as well. We really seek the collaboration with governments and donor agencies for implementing the capacity building for the information security data protection and also responsible use of data of the digital resilience framework as well.
With that I'm going to pause and thank you all for letting me have this stage to share with you what UNICEF is doing in digital transformation, digital innovation and more importantly digital resilience work. I'm going to hand it back to you. Dino, back to you. Dino, I cannot hear you. I am not sure. I think workshop 7 is muted.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Can you hear me now?
>> FUI MENG LIEW: Yes, I was able to hear you. Handing it over back to you.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you very much Fui Meng Liew. I really like your presentation. Actually I really like the fact that you gave concrete example of digital public goods. There is a lot of talk about DPI, but it is not always clear for many in the audience for how this is translated into concrete application. Thank you very much for sharing the examples of UNICEF.
With that said we are now switching to my organization the UN pension fund. I will be walking you through the innovation that we implemented in the digital identity for proof of life or proof of existence.
I'm going to share my screen. In the case of the UN Pension Fund we are focused on demographic. Basically what we refer to the aging population. The UN pension fund has 86,000 beneficiaries and one of the problems that the UN pension fund how to address and confirm and determine that this individual that receives periodic benefits from the UN pension fund are indeed still alive. I will share how we use emerging technology.
In data and indicators we are using benchmark being defined and making sure that we may 100% of the benefit. The market value of our asset as of today is $100 billion. In 2023 was evaluated and financial asset globally. An anxiety of $100 billion. We are fully funded. We are one of the few pension fund in the world that is a defined pension fund, and we are completely funded actually. In 2023 we are 117% funded. We serve 25 member organization. The 83,000 benefit increased to 86,000. The 143,000 participant increased to 150,000.
These are the emblems and logos that you can recognize and member organization that we are serving.
One of our most important partner is going to present shortly after me. The International Nation Computing Center that developed all our innovative application and solution which I'm going to speak about today. This will be my organization and then Sameer, the director of the International Computing Network can articulate a much wider. Not only for the UN pension fund and UNICEF and the entire ecosystem of the UN System.
Here is the problem that I was alluding to before.
For more than 70 years the UN pension fund had this issue of serving this 86,000 individual and 193 countries and determine or confirming that they were alive. How this was done is mailing 195 countries paper‑based form and asking them to sign it and return the back through the same 195 postal services. As you can appreciate this process was highly prone to at least delays and indeed we had to perform this process twice a years. In some cases to loss of paper. Unfortunately in extreme cases with the rules of the pension fund we were forced to suspend payments. That of course has serious and negative impact on the household.
How did we address this problem? We transform and digitalized transformation a paper‑base and mail‑base process into a solution that uses emerging technology with the mobile application biometrics and artificial intelligence and global positioning system.
This is indeed the real screen shot of our internet posting in 2021 when we went live with the application, and we announced to all our stakeholders and clients the solution itself. On the right side you see the screenshot of the mobile application and each one of our clients and users can download in their device. On the left side you see the screenshot of our internet posting.
So when we were given this problem we had to articulate and basically translate the problem into its main logical components. We identified the need to provide full proof. One was the identity in the beginning of the process. When we enroll the client and then prove the authentication every after. Every time the application is utilized.
As I alluded to before, this is not just a digital identity solution. It is a digital identity solution for proof of life. Proof of existence. Demonstrating that the intended recipient is still alive. Therefore we have to provide proof of existence and proof of action to create an independently auditable and traceable record. That could be verified by all parties. Proof of location. In some cases our beneficiary can receive payment in local currency and they reside in the country for which they elected to receive the benefit.
Of course they were implicit and explicit. Attribution for the transaction.
In doing so we were inspired by the 2018 UN secretary general strategy on new technology and sustainable goals and most by the UN initiative of the UN secretary general.
How did we address? As I alluded to before. We used and adopted emerging technology. Block chain biometrics, artificial intelligence and geolocation.
Blockchain served us. Has the technology that they allowed us to create an immutable, independently auditable traceable ledger. Each recorded.
Why blockchain? I added this slide. Often in times in 2021 when we went live I was asked why did I use blockchain? First and foremost as the Chief Information Officer I wanted to use the technology that would also prevent any potential form of conclusion. Primarily with my own stuff. Of course technological speaking the solution can also be implemented to use distributed databases. By database by definition has and requires a database administrator. By default has super user access to potentially manipulate the database. Therefore, I wanted to make sure that in order to protect my staff and myself and of course the organization I was going to adopt the technology and prevent and protect collusion. I did anything that didn't have a center control. Utilizing a permission based blockchain we could determine who could participate. The scope is limited to the 86,000 of the UN pension fund. Of course support privacy and user technology and zero knowledge truth and maintain immutable ledger.
There are documents and forums and help organization when indeed blockchain is the suitable technology.
Having used a technology based on biometrics and facial recognition very soon we realized that we were going to be exposed to new vulnerabilities. Such as the vulnerability presented in the threats and by artificial intelligence with the deep fake. Therefore, we decide to fight AI with AI. By embedding into the solution AI model that verifies and tests if the person on the other side of the phone or camera is a real person and not a synthetic or artificially generated image. Therefore, facial recognition which is stored online on the device of the user, so we do not transmit or store at any given time the biometric profile and date and input and specific event such as authentication has occurred and recorded.
Finally with GPS capture the location when and if needed. So (audio is garbled). Most of the career was spent in IT modeling. One of the immediate second question that I wanted to address after designing implementing this application and subject matter and expertise in (audio is garbled). Technology is secure, credible, trustworthy and sustainable?
Try to find standard best practices, especially international best practices. (Audio is garbled). One of the first things that I did in absence of specific standards of ‑‑ (audio is garbled).
The scope of the certification was focused on the application itself. We got certified 2021 we were subject to surveillance audit.
The second thing is dealing with biometrics and technology. I also subjected to the solution (audio garbled). Issued by the organization. Finally I also submitted the application to a specific cybersecurity assessment.
As in data privacy. The UN is not subject, for example, the United Nations in privacy principles that are specifically align in the GPR seminar regulation and therefore reconduct an assessment of the data. (Audio garbled). Application that used biometrics is indeed resistant and potential attack created generated using artificial intelligence. I hope to have it completed by the first quarter of 2025. UN as a whole decided to adopt the same solution to create now a digital identity for all staff member of the United Nations. Indeed this is the document which is public available where the CEB, Chief Executive Board launched the project and defined and appointed UNICC has the technical support and subject matter expert for the implementation of this solution. Not only in the UN pension fund as in my case, but now in the entire UN System. These are the screenshot of the application itself that our colleagues and myself included will be able now to download in our phone and use specific services related to us as staff members.
Some mention of acknowledgement and recognition. In 2021 we received a reward from the UN secretary general in innovation and sustainability. Shortly after the Government Blockchain Association gave us an award on social impact.
We also became a case study by Gartner. Gartner is a world leader in market research. They actually documented and issued a case study on our solution. There was a three general and pension investment that recognized our invention.
Here we are in the village booth. I created a specific dynamic coalition and brought to the attention to all our stakeholders the importance of blockchain and emerging technologies. Thank you for your attention.
I will now pass the floor and led the implementation of the solution and speak broadly about his support to all the UN systems. Sameer the floor is yours.
>> SAMEER CHAUHAN: Let me know if you can see this. Thank you and all the other colleagues in UNHCR UNICEF and UNICC. Thank you for having me in this forum. As you mentioned we are to support you in the transformation journey. I will walk you through a few slides. There are really good connections to what you shared Dino earlier. I think it will be useful to present that from our point of view of what we did.
Just a bit of background. We are designed to a general resolution. We are the largest strategic partner in digital as well as cyber for the UN System.
We have over 100 clients and partner organizations. They work with us in some way shape or form for cyber and digital efforts that they have. We have been around for 54 years now. It was 54 years as of yesterday. We celebrated our 54th birthday.
Whole diversity of digital services and operate out of five locations currently.
I think Dino you shared a version of this map also. We support everyone across the UN and digital journeys.
The work we do is tried to look at it from a perspective of which SDGs do we support? Since we work with the entire UN System we started doing a mapping and work and project support all 17 SDGs.
One more point to just recently as if months ago and strategy in UNICC. Framework and allows us to build digital foundations that all the UN partners can then use for their journeys and digital transformation journeys and developing their digital solutions in order to achieve their digital accounts. There are five digital strategies. Everything from where they are built and infrastructure to where it is running and tools and solutions that we can help our partners with to securing those solutions to using data and AI services to derive insights built by the partners and finally providing expertise and insights. Experts that can provide service and support to the partners as they undergo their digital journeys.
I will share examples of what we do. On average we do 150 to 250 projects a year for our partners. We manage more than beta centers as well as partners in the public cloud. It is a very vast portfolio of technology services. These are just snapshots and examples to give you an idea of the work we do.
The big buzz word is Gen‑AI for specific needs and mandates for the work they do. Out for the field and crowd and refugees and women and kids and so forth. We are building behind the scene common solutions and multiple partners can use. This is a great example for that. We did a chat board. Can you explain how much sick leave do I have? How do I get parental leave? Can I request to work 90% of the time. We took the solutions that they built and expanded it to make it work for 13 different organizations.
We sift through all the AI organizations and train the AI and make sure that it is available to all the employees of this organization. This is being scaled up for partner organizations and continue to use this platform.
Another one which Dino spoke about earlier is we built a core technology that was used by the pension fund to build a certificate of entitlement that Dino shared. What we did then since this was championed by the Chief Executive Boards of the UN System they asked us to build on top of that pension solution. That will be the UN Digital ID. Today it is six organizations. They have launched this. The first phase of the system is live. The goal is multiple capabilities and features will be built on and using this same blockchain with the metric solution that Dino spoke earlier. This will allow all UN organizations to use this one. Common platform to facilitate all the data exchange and interoperability and staff data. The data will be controlled by the staff members themselves. They will get to choose what infection they share with stakeholders and when and revoke that access once they share that information safely.
This is just another example of shared common solution that we have built.
When it comes to digital innovation the solutions could be big or small. It could be very complex or fairly simple. As we work with each one of our partners our goal is to make sure that it is serving their needs, and it is actually impactful. This is great example of what we built for PAHO. Region office of America. They have Max and Mia. Handled processes and procurement. Max and Mia are now live and bots. They automate the orders. For COVID it was a huge blessing. They were handling vaccines and supplies shipped all through America. Max uses AI. More advanced bot than Mia. There is much more complexity there and typically something a human would do. In concentrating it is able to generate the shipping notification. It saves thousands of hours of human work a week.
Another example is work we've done with a partnership that we have and important election assistance.
They created a task force and asked us to build an early report. It is iReport information. It gathers real‑time and independent and monitoring authorities and risk reports. It flags any incidents around electoral violence and election and after election and more functionality and capability being built to make the platform meaningful and make sure that elections are handled seamlessly without violence or interruptions.
We have a large cybersecurity practice. What we do here and what I'm demonstrating here is again the collective collaboration around the UN System where we have brought the entire system together to make sure that we look at all the intelligence. So that we can all make collective decisions to best defined ourselves from cyber risks and cyber-attacks. We gather information from our partner agencies and enrich from commercial security firms and service providers and different member stake and law enforcement and other trusted sources. Those insights are refined, and it is with the entire community. How do you identify a potential anomaly and how do you respond to those, and mitigating acts do you take?
That is an example of a shared collective responsibility in action. This might be the last example I think I have.
I wanted to highlight here is we also take solutions that have been built by other partners. In this instance it is a solution built by UNICEF and the World Food Program. The idea is to have one platform. These are third party organizations and these three organizations used to work with to build one common interface. A partner portal that they can come in and interact with these UN organizations. That platform was handed to us by UNICEF, and we took it and scaled it and enhanced it and capabilities to it. In the meantime more organizations have joined. At this point there are 12 or 13 UN organizations that use it. This has become one common way, and 40,000 civil organizations now can interact, partner and do work with the entire UN System.
As you can see there is massive functionality that is in there concluding some chatbots and PSCM models to make sure that any civil society organizations and UN System works with has gone through some level of screening and background checks if you will.
These are examples of the kinds of work we do at UNICC. Each one of these projects is designed for scale and used by multiple organizations. As always we have to be cost effective and respect the principles of the UN family and make sure that we're neutral and unbiased in the work we do. With that I will stop Dino. I will hand back to you and thank you for giving us a chance to speak on what we do.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you so much Sameer for joining us and sharing this meaningful application that you have built for the benefit of the UN. I actually really like that quote that you used. Built by the UN for the UN. I think that is very indicative of the spirit that we all follow collaboratively in sharing our problems and finding common solutions. Thank you very much. I think it is very insightful and meaningful.
With that said I think we are perfectly on time with our schedule. We now have approximately 10, 15 minutes for any question or answers that you may have. I see three hands raised. If I can ask to pass the mic. Firsthand is over here.
>> Hello and good morning, everyone. Really wonderful efforts that the UN is doing and application that you have applied for the system.
My question is such application is it an applicable to offer it for cities and governments over the world for them to use it as something from the UN with a very good, like, you know, public private partnership? You know such systems is very important for the community, but it is expensive as well. Such governments just avoiding implementing these systems because of its cost you know. Is that something you may think about in the future? Thank you.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Can you please mention your name and organization?
>> I'm from the Government Blockchain Association. I represent in the Middle East.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you. Maybe this is a question for Sameer and can elaborate more about the mandate and mission of UNICC and potential interaction and beyond the UN and other entities.
>> SAMEER CHAUHAN: Thank you, Dino. Thank you for your question. Two things to mention here.
One UNICC is designed to work with the UN System and beyond. We can work with other nonprofit organizations all right. Since our whole premise in creating UNICC and efficiency of scale and reuse. Anything we built for our partners like for Dino and UNHCR and UNICEF we can. Making guidelines and other members and member states. We have initiatives that we're working with like for cities. We do collaborate with cities. Any knowledge that we have and expertise we have we want to make sure that we make it available to the broader community besides outside of the UN.
The second part I'll make is partners themselves as you saw examples from Mike and UNICEF and Dino. What we try to do across the entire system is relevant and applicable in the greater world outside.
Many, many solutions and digital solutions by our partner or ICC and without is in the country level. The examples are designed by UNICEF and UNICC so that they can be available for other countries. I hope that answers your question.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you very much, Sameer and from the audience. If you can say your name and organization.
>> Thank you very much for this and this presentation. Doing the formal vision. I'm from the University of Ghana. I'm part of the chapter. I want to know this question goes to you. It is about your fund. The question is who qualifies for the fun?
How do you do your due diligence to find out if the grantees are the right people applying for the fund?
Finally how do you monitor the grantees? I have experience. I'm part of bank where we give funding for capacity building. We went for the vision just last week and find one grantee has closed down his organization. He has changed his number, and we cannot find him. Although we have phone number in the application. We have monitors to go and see what they are doing. Still this person has vanished. I mean yours is a remote one. How do you monitor to find out that the grantees exist and finding them from using this technology?
The last one is the name of the organization. I design online content for my investor. I want to know about former education that you provide them. You have a common platform where they use and take for other basic level high school level or (audio is garbled). Thank you very much.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you for your question. I'll try to be very brief because there are many details in the process.
First and foremost. Answer to the first question. Who qualifies? The UN pension serves 25 organizations. All the UN entities in the system. Plus additional international organizations that although are not part of the UN System do have certain do meet certain requirements and parameters. Therefore they submit a request to be accepted into the UN pension fund. We have a board that meets regularly every year. They go through this process and ultimately decide whether or not they can be included.
Second question: How do we vouch? How do we validate? How do we monitor?
Someone in order to become this to be a former staff member. Which means we have a history that the member organization has to provide to us through data interfaces. We have two main data interfaces. One is the financial and the other is human resources data interfaces to which we collect the entire history on a regular basis of each staff member so that before they reach the normal retirement age we get in touch with them and ask them certain documentation that proves and validates who they are and where they're going to live.
The process of the digital identification for proof of life and proof of existence starts with an onboarding process. I made that decision before. Identification and the first step is to identify and can be admitted to the digital solution of the fund. We verify and originally we wanted to do in person. That happened exactly through the pandemic. We had to convert a process and digital process, and video onboarding process conducted in the call center and require the person with their national ID. We match the ID with the documents on file. We are using the AI and indeed the person on the other side of the camera matches what we have on file.
Once we have done that we authentic the person. There is an addition question that you did not ask and commonly asked. How do we take into account the aging process? Unfortunately we get older. How do we make sure that the information is provided. Every time at least once a year, every time the user utilizes the application and biometric profile is updated. We are taking account the aging process.
>> MICHAEL WALTON: We do have lots of partnerships with different universities across the world and online courses et cetera. We are about to enter the process now of creating a new application, a new cycle of opportunities. We work very closely with universities and funding scholarships and partners as well. We don't do the courses as well but gather together every country and opportunities and do tertiary applications. Happy to speak about that. It is programs connected to education and remote learning. Thanks. The last question.
>> Thank you very much. My name is Nancy. I serve as organization in Kenya. My question and concern is about accessibility for possibilities. You have a standardized system. Middle age and elderly in terms of access within the system. Thank you.
>> MICHAEL WALTON: Is that question directed to pension fund? UNICEF? All of us?
>> Disability does not choose. (Audio garbled).
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: What demographic is peculiar and to my title. We are dealing with the aging population. Definitely the issue with accessibility I take into account both in our website and instruction and also in allowing those who have limitation to be assisted by legal guardians. We are also for that. Thank you.
>> MICHAEL WALTON: A lot of work on disability over the last years and applications. We want to ensure that when somebody wants to work for UNHCR they can come to workplace where the application can be used. Refugee perspective we are working with refugees to make sure that it is wider and how do we make sure that it happens across the UN. There is a potential here on accessibility so that everybody can take the benefit that way. 100% agree with that priority. Thank you.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you, Mike. Would you like to give your perspective on UNICEF?
>> FUI MENG LIEW: For UNICEF we take accessibility seriously. Our website is actually proven to be accessible. Accessibility is not only just by age. There is disabilities and things like that for people that are color‑blind and can they access the information in our internal system. That is one angle. The other angle is children. A lot of children having disabilities and needing better digital accessibility functions in the tools that we provide a lot of them are not identified. We are also working on how to make sure that we identify that age group and children. There is more intentionally so that we can provide interventions digitally to give them and help them actually learn and help them being able to like get through the journey better.
Two different angles that we are looking at accessibility and both very, very important for the work as well. Thank you for the question.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you, Fui Meng Liew. Sameer.
>> SAMEER CHAUHAN: As you heard from the other speakers this is front and center for what we do. Across the UN there is an ecosystem and chief technology officers. They meet on a regular basis and accessibility and guidelines is a key topic that they discuss at that level. We want to make sure that everybody is using the same approach. I can speak to UNICC and all the systems we built. We add here to the guidelines for accessibility. There are additional guidelines. For example, human rights guidelines that have been issued by the secretary general and all the work that we do those human rights guidelines are also taken into consideration and any gender consideration et cetera. As Dino alluded in the pension fund we have to make sure there is no bias from the regional perspective or geographical perspectives. There are many, many factors to take into consideration. Absolutely. We're all conscious of and addressing every day. Thank you.
>> DINO CATALDO DELL'ACCIO: Thank you very much Sameer. We're perfect in time. Thank you very much for your participation. I don't see any questions on the chat. I think that we can thank the active participation of the audience both in person as well as online. Thanks all my colleagues and friends, speakers, Michael Walton and Fui Meng Liew and Sameer Chauhan. Thank you. The recording is available on the website along with the presentation.
>> FUI MENG LIEW: Thank you very much. Have a good day.
>> SAMEER CHAUHAN: Thank you. Bye‑bye.