It’s a “first of its kind” for the United Nations system, but the UN Development Programme’s new digital strategy is looking to “leverage digital tools as drivers of development” as they work toward the organization’s Sustainable Development Goals, explains Senior Reporter Catherine Chaney, who took a closer look at the UNDP’s digital transformation for Devex.
As UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner explained, “we’re trying to make that which UNDP can offer to a country highly relevant. In other words, we have to become ourselves digitally literate and understand how development and this digital future intersect.”
Steiner hopes the digital strategy, which launched in April 2019, will allow the UNDP to be in a better position to support programs like the flagship program of the Digital Bangladesh agenda. This initiative, in which the UNDP was a key partner, has allowed citizens to use digital access points for more than 150 services within 4 kilometers of where they live, whereas in the past, citizens were required to travel for days to access government services or documents like birth registration, land records, or life insurance.
The result? Bangladeshi citizens saved nearly 2 nearly billion days of time, more than $8 billion in costs, and more than 1 billion visits to government offices.
In developing the digital strategy, Steiner looked inward, at the organization itself: “Digital was a very abstract concept at the country level, where 95% of UNDP’s staff work across the world,” he said.
In one case, head of UNDP’s economic development unit in Ecuador Carlo Ruiz had tried numerous innovations, but scaling proved difficult. “It was not until he saw a call from the office of the administrator asking country offices to put forward proposals that he pitched his idea to headquarters,” Chaney writes.
Ruiz is now working on a project that uses blockchain technology for traceability — for example, of chocolate bars, their first use case.
“He hopes this project will demonstrate to the private sector how blockchain technology for traceability can be leveraged for social outcomes and financial returns across many products and markets,” reports Chaney.
Also on the horizon for UNDP? Looking at how the digital era might bring new forms of financing — specifically, trying to strike a balance between short-term, on-demand consulting instead of long- term, project-based work.
“A centralized approach often fails because they don’t involve people from the beginning or the demand isn’t there,” said Robert Opp, who joined UNDP as chief digital officer in August 2019. “The “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach leads to fragmentation and duplication of resources,” Opp continued.
Recognizing the importance of people to digital transformation, the organization has started identifying “digital champions” within its ranks, creating a course staff can take, providing an organization-wide webinar on digital strategy, and supporting “digital lighthouse initiatives” — projects that show how tech can have a strong impact on their work.
“We’re either going digital or we are going out of business,” Opp said. “The world is changing, the needs of our partners are changing, so if we’re going to serve them well and achieve the SDGs, we need to change as well.”
