The team won the process improvement award for going “the extra mile” when implementing an online system to support field missions. Photo: UNOPS

The UN 21 Awards recognize outstanding initiatives by individual staff members or teams to improve the delivery of UN programmes and to promote their values. The innovations recognized are meant to serve as best practice examples to inspire others within the UN system.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presided over the 2011 ceremony, which took place on 2 August at the Dag Hammarskjöld Library Auditorium at the UN headquarters in New York. The awards recognize innovative projects across the UN system. This year, four of the 15 finalists and one of the six winners were products developed by UNOPS project management teams under the guidance of the DFS-Information & Communications Technology Division (ICTD).

The UNOPS-supported Field Support Suite (FSS) application won in the "Process Improvement" category. This common platform has made it possible for all field missions worldwide and over 47,000 users to access the same centrally managed web applications for their peacekeeping missions, reducing the time and costs for user training and improving support, coordination and communication across missions. The FSS team is based in the United Nations Logistics Base in Brindisi, Italy.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presents the 2011 UN 21 Awards. UN photo/Eskinder Debebe

Recognizing the FSS achievements, Amedeo Micelli, UNOPS Programme Manager at the United Nations Logistics Base, said:"This ongoing project has revealed itself to be even more interesting than anticipated as it has traversed multiple and varied business processes. We have had the pleasure, and the honour, to work together with a vast and diverse user community in peacekeeping.

“Personally, I have been very pleased by the spirit of teamwork that has accompanied the project in all its phases. This achievement has been made possible with the collaboration of our UNOPS colleagues in New York and the outstanding skills and dedication of the offshore development centre established by ICTD in Entebbe, Uganda.”

UNOPS Executive Director Jan Mattsson added: “We are proud to have offered first-rate operational support that made it possible for our partners to excel.”

The three other project finalists supported by UNOPS teams were: the Operational Report Repository, which provides a secure, web-based portal for Department of Peacekeeping Operations and Department of Political Affairs operational reports; the Strategic Management System, which gives a comprehensive view of UN global peacekeeping activities, accessible from a single dashboard; and the Roadmap application, which collects and manages data from missions to assist the DFS and headquarters specialists in coordinating and monitoring mission activities.

Highlighting the importance of the UN 21 Awards, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: “I believe it is essential to recognize the initiative of staff members who go the extra mile, who see opportunities to change their working environment, and who transform such opportunities into achievements. To all the finalists we recognize here today, let me say this: you share an innovator’s spirit.”

A total of 65 projects were nominated from across the globe. Evaluation teams consisting of staff members from different UN duty stations reviewed the nominations and proposed a short-list of finalists. A High-Level Panel then selected the winning projects.

The UN 21 Awards Programme was established in 1996 to motivate UN staff to participate in the Secretary-General’s reform of the organization and promote a results-oriented culture.