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Intergovernmental services innovations 

e-deleGATE: digital access to Secretariat services anytime, anywhere 

In order to streamline intergovernmental services to Member State delegations and better facilitate their negotiations and deliberations, the Department developed the portal and rolled it out in 2018. A single-entry platform for e-services provided by the Secretariat, the portal allows authorized delegates to access secretariat services at any hour from any location. The e-deleGATE portal offers a variety of digital services, including: 

• e-Speakers: inscribe individuals to a list of speakers
• e-Sponsorship: open a draft resolution for sponsorship and join in sponsoring a draft resolution
• e-Submission: submit draft resolutions to the Secretariat
• e-Voting intentions: submit a voting intention to be reflected in the official records of the meeting
• e-List of participants: register a list of delegations for the respective intergovernmental bodies
• e-Credentials: submit electronic credentials for the sessions of the General Assembly and United Nations conferences
• e-Decisions: post draft texts of decisions adopted by the General Assembly
• Candiweb: provide up-to-date information on upcoming elections in the respective intergovernmental bodies
• Committee Place: post documentation related to the work of the respective intergovernmental bodies
• Committee Announcement: post and record announcements from the Secretariat regarding the work of the respective intergovernmental bodies 
   

The e-deleGATE services are currently offered to the General Assembly plenary, Main Committees and other subsidiary bodies of the General Assembly; the Security Council and some of its subsidiary bodies; the Economic and Social Council and some of its subsidiary bodies; and at times, United Nations conferences.   

The General Assembly has noted with appreciation the progress made in automating the publication of information about the work of the General Assembly, including the list of resolutions; called upon its subsidiary organs to use, as much as possible, existing e-deleGATE modules; encouraged Member States to make, to the extent possible, full use of e-services provided by the Secretariat, in order to save costs and reduce the environmental impact and improve the distribution of documents; and requested the Secretariat to continue to improve, harmonize and unify e-services provided to Member States under e-deleGATE with a view to creating a full-fledged delegates’ online workplace in all six official languages (see resolutions , and ).

Meetings management innovations

gMeets (One-Stop-Shop) 

Over the past 15 years, the Department has been using and continuously improving the system which is the central tool for managing meetings to cover the entire spectrum of meeting-related activities in New York, and at other United Nations entities, including the United Nations Offices at Geneva, Vienna and Nairobi, the Economic Commissions for Europe and Africa, the Economic and Social Commissions for Asia and the Pacific and Western Asia, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.   

gMeets is used throughout the life cycle of mandated meetings, offering a true beginning-to-end conference-planning experience – starting from the review of draft resolutions for conference-servicing implications to calendar planning through execution and post-implementation evaluation. 

Web-based multilingual calendar

In line with General Assembly resolution 67/292 on multilingualism, which calls for a comprehensive review of all United Nations websites to better achieve language parity, the United Nations Calendar of Conferences and Meetings public website was launched in the six official languages in September 2022. The target audience of the website includes Member States, technical and substantive secretariats of intergovernmental meeting bodies, United Nations staff and the general public.

Journal of the United Nations 

The , a flagship publication of the Department, is the source for the most up-to-date and in-depth information covering daily and forthcoming meetings at United Nations Headquarters. It encompasses official meetings convened by intergovernmental bodies; informal consultations on draft proposals convened by delegations; and other meetings organized by Member States, Secretariat departments and offices and other United Nations entities. It also provides a wide array of useful information, such as the daily list of documents issued at Headquarters; signatures and/or ratifications of multilateral treaties; summaries of past official meetings; announcements by Secretariat departments and offices; and other critical general information. The "Other events" section, exclusively reserved for announcements by permanent and observer missions, showcases parallel briefings and side events that Member States wish to publicize broadly. All content related to official meetings, including their summaries, is available in the six official languages. With real-time updates, this multilingual, user-friendly website also has a Progressive Web App (PWA) which are both compatible with smartphones and tablets and features an automatically generated PDF version of the Journal. Through dedicated sections, the Journal covers that are held at and away from United Nations Headquarters and also covers the judicial activities of the . It also features a global calendar of conferences and meetings. The Journal also serves as a single gateway to access meetings at the United Nations Offices in Nairobi and Vienna.

Document management innovations 

gDoc

gDoc was deployed in 2022 at the four conference-servicing duty stations as a single global system that supports the Department’s globally coordinated workflow for processing documentation requests and managing capacity. The system helps managers and staff in the documentation chain to manage their daily operations in a more harmonized and streamlined manner. By the end of March 2024, gDoc had also been deployed to the regional commissions and six other United Nations entities. 

The system has various documentation workflow and capacity modules, covering forecasting and planning, submission and registration, production and issuance.  

gDoc is interfaced with other systems, including eLUNa, gMeets and gData, in order to maximize the automation of workflow processes and for reporting purposes.  

gText 

The global gText project provides internal and contractual translators at all four conference-servicing duty stations, regional commissions and other entities of the United Nations system with a complete and uniform suite of Internet-based language tools, as well as seamless access to background information necessary for high-quality translation. It was developed to increase the quality and efficiency of translation and related processes.  

By radically changing the working methods in the multilingual documentation-processing chain, the gText project has provided a set of tools that meet the very specific needs of United Nations language professionals. Improvements and new features are constantly being integrated into the suite of gText tools.  

At the core of the innovative tools developed as part of the project are two crucial applications: , the United Nations terminology database, and , a computer-assisted translation tool that combines automatic identification of previously translated segments and terminology with access to machine translation.

Training innovation  

SPOT – self-paced online training for language staff 

The Documentation Division in New York has developed an online training tool called SPOT (for self-paced online training) that contains materials, guidance, learning activities and other resources to support the continuous professional development of its staff. SPOT reduces duplication and expedites knowledge sharing across the language services and adds another tool to complement the other types of training arranged for language staff. The tool also serves as a central repository of training materials. The content is being created by small teams in the Documentation Division themselves, so it can be easily and quickly updated and expanded as training needs evolve. SPOT was launched in April 2020 in New York. At a later stage, the project could be extended to the other language services, such as verbatim reporting and interpretation, and to the other conference-servicing duty stations. 

Other innovations 

NADI (Nodes for Advanced Data Integration): Study on data and the supply chain: integrated delivery of conference services  

The Department initiated a study of the design and delivery of conference services with data integration as its focus in December 2018. This study, the first of its kind in conference services was completed in 2020 and is entitled, NADI (Nodes for Advanced Data Integration). 

NADI examines how data flows, and its elements are  enriched by various processes as they move along the supply chain. Following a use-case centric approach advocated by the Data Strategy of the Secretary General, NADI,  aims at leveraging the power of data and information as a strategic asset that flows through the supply chain, to enhance service delivery in DGACM. 

NADI linked the delivery of the Department’s suite of conference services including language (translation and interpretation) and technical support services, through a supply chain for the delivery of its processes and products, be it data related to voting, sponsors and statements by Member States, or documentation, official records, resolutions and decisions. The supply chain will support the use of data and metadata, gathered and/or updated in its primary location, to deliver machine-readable documents, robot writing and business intelligence. Enabling access to data that are authentic, relevant and referable where each data element is mastered and/or edited in only one place is expected to not only break silos and identify duplication of efforts but also bring efficiencies. 

NADI covered in-depth studies of a variety of processes that resulted in identifying 47 used cases and nine benefits and related products that would be possible upon establishing a single source of truth and enriching the source data as it moves along the supply chain. They are Machine Readable Documents, Robotic Writing, Virtual Meetings, Harmonization, Interoperability, SDG Score Card, Future Client Services, Transparency & Machine Learning. At the core of the study is the concept of “single source of truth”, aimed at identifying an optimal source for each data point and sharing the data across units as it moves along the supply chain, following a “data stewardship” model.

Many of the used cases in NADI are being implemented by various projects within the Department focusing on multilingual data-reuse, robotic writing, interoperability, and technology re-use.

Innovation at the Division of Conference Management (United Nations Office at Geneva)

As a conference organizer, the Division of Conference Management remains focused on creating an environment to facilitate productive exchanges among its delegates. High-quality interpretation and translation services, smooth administrative processes, the removal of logistical stress and the efficient flow of information and communication, remain its priority. Putting the needs of clients at the heart of its activities is what the Division endeavours to do. Continued investment in innovation helps the Division respond to those needs so that Member States can work more quickly and effectively. In the past few years, staff of the Division of Conference Management have initiated, driven or implemented innovation in key areas including: meeting participant registration (Indico), gData departmental business intelligence and decision support platform, digital publications (annual report of the United Nations Office at Geneva), administrative workflows and client relations. 

In 2019, as part of its strategic focus on client orientation and adaptability, the Division conducted a detailed assessment of the needs of client organizations entitled “Conferencing today and tomorrow”. The project focused on how to enhance the conferencing experience of Member States and substantive secretariats today, and how their needs may evolve over the next 5 to 10 years. By looking at both existing and emerging requirements, the Division analysed the services, innovations and conferencing technologies that could be leveraged to support intergovernmental processes today and in the future.  

Meeting advisory and guidance services 

A comprehensive compendium of services was developed in consultation with the Division and stakeholders of the United Nations Office at Geneva to meet the needs of clients and provide clear guidance on each step of the planning and execution phases of major conferences and events that involve multiple service providers.  

Speech-to-text service 

The Fully Automated Speech-to-Text (FAST) project, developed in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), leverages speech recognition technology to provide searchable automatic transcripts of public meetings at the UNOG. The transcripts serve as an additional tool to assist meeting participants and organizers in capturing and reporting on deliberations. They are also used internally by UNIS press officers, DCM precis-writers, and desktop publishing assistants transcribing Conference on Disarmament audios, the only Geneva organ with verbatim report entitlement.

The project team has been collaborating WIPO to customize and improve the latter’s proprietary speech recognition models. The FAST team collected thousands of hours’ worth of training data (audio files and their matching transcripts) in the six official UN languages. Thanks to the common pool of data shared with ILO, ITU, WIPO, WTO, and other international organizations, the retrained speech-to-text instances have become more relevant to, and accurate for, the UNOG’s conferencing environment with its multilingual voices, diverse accents, atypical speech and domain-specific terminology.

Following the development of an open API, the word-aligned transcriptions are automatically matched with the respective audio channels on the redesigned Digital Recordings Portal. English, French, and Spanish were integrated in 2022, and Arabic, Chinese, and Russian are scheduled for rollout in September 2023.

FAST has been exploring additional requirements put forward by clients who are interested in further leveraging the growing collection of editable transcripts for text mining purposes. Over 40 use-cases for FAST transcripts have been identified so far, covering text extraction, text classification, unsupervised and supervised topic modelling, natural language generation, and combinations thereof. FAST is joining forces with e-deleGATE to make speech-to-text service a conferencing staple and to advance to an ambitious next step – speech-to-summary.

Feedback mechanisms on meeting servicing   

This is a simple mechanism to provide immediate feedback at the end of meetings on the experience of meeting participants and key services received from the United Nations Office at Geneva. 

Extrabudgetary conference cost estimate calculator  

The Division has launched a self-service cost estimate calculator for extrabudgetary meetings. The purpose of the calculator is to assist clients with the financial planning of meetings and events by enabling scenario planning for the cost of conference services. Clients can select the services they intend to include in the meeting (such as interpretation, documentation, audiovisual, etc.), and instantly obtain a provisional cost estimate for the meeting. They are also able to modify their selections to obtain an alternate cost estimate based on the inclusion or exclusion of specific conference management services. 

Standard operating procedures for the organization of accessible meetings

The Division issued (SOP) for the organization of accessible meetings, with a view to implementing the United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy at the United Nations Office at Geneva. The procedures provide detailed step-by-step guidance to meeting organizers for all stages of the process, from accessible conference announcements to accreditation procedures and delivery of inclusive events.

Building a culture of innovation 

The Division launched an in-house innovation team to foster a culture of creativity and provide a forum to take new ideas from concept to reality. Launched following a 100-Day Innovation Challenge, the agile format of the team enabled current staff members to dedicate a limited amount of time to innovation projects, with the team composition rotating on a quarterly basis. The group researched how emerging technologies and methods can enhance service offerings to clients, incubated ideas and took them forward to prototype. Pilot projects emerging from this initiative include explorations with academia on the impact of emerging technologies on conference services, and hosting events with international organizations and permanent missions on how technology is changing the field of intergovernmental conferencing. Other projects involved introducing an automated list of speakers for delegates in meeting rooms; revitalizing and modernizing documentation formats; and the use of predictive analytics to optimize queue times and automate speech-to-text solutions. 

Innovation in publications  

The Division offers readers a richer experience by blurring the boundaries between print and digital products. The ISO certified printing team applies best practices to physical products, such as recycled paper and vegetable inks, original print formats, tactile enhancement using varnishes and cut-outs. The award-winning design and multimedia team delivers innovative and engaging experiences through immersive, narrative-driven visuals and fully responsive online publications. The team’s web products ensure a seamless reader experience accessible across platforms and devices. The team was designated to work on the past five editions of the Secretary-General’s report on the work of the organization.

Innovations at the Conference Management Service (United Nations Office at Vienna) 

Technology

The Conference Management Service  played an innovative role in the evolution of conference servicing by creating many of the information technology tools that are now used at all duty stations. These legacy applications helped to lay the foundations for integrated global management tools, and many continue to support the business processes in the Department. In addition to gText and gMeets, staff in Vienna also developed eCorrespondence, the Contractor Management Application (CMA) and eAPG, an interpreter’s assignment tool.

While many global projects are now led by teams in New York, the Service contributes to development and improvements by conducting pilots, testing features and providing feedback. The Service is also proactive in adopting new applications from other duty stations. For example, staff in meetings and documentation management are working closely with project teams of One-Stop-Shop and the Journal of the United Nations to facilitate the Vienna launch of those two tools. In the documentation area, efforts are underway to expand the machine-readable technologies that were developed in New York and tailor these to the needs of intergovernmental bodies in Vienna.

Workforce optimization

The Service has adopted an innovative approach to meeting staffing needs in a fast-changing world. The aim is to diversify and leverage the skills of staff to bolster capacity in areas that are growing. For example, in recent years, printing has decreased with the proliferation of digital documents and e-Pubs. At the same time, the meetings services workload and the volume of multilingual publishing products have grown dramatically. To accommodate this shift, printing staff are modernizing their skillsets to provide increasingly technical support for meetings and publishing.

Publishing?

The graphic designers in the Service are known for their cutting-edge multimedia products and data visualizations. To facilitate a wider reach online, designers and publishing staff prepare social media packages to accompany e-Pubs. To improve discoverability in online searches, they assign multilingual metadata to all products. Additionally, multilingual alt text descriptions are standard for all images to enhance accessibility. These innovations ensure that the message and aims of the United Nations reach the widest possible audience.