UNICC presented its new learning service UN Digital Academy on Thursday 18 June to over thirty people from 14 UN Agencies and non-profit organizations interested in subscribing to UNICC’s new service.

The UN Digital Academy is a learning platform developed jointly by Microsoft and UNICC that serves as a central repository of training resources and content to enable UN staff and stakeholders in their digital transformation journeys.

Chief Technology Officer Shashank Rai and Head of Learning Services Franca Vinci offered a presentation to show the key features of the product, delivered a short demo of the platform and answered questions from attendees. Participating organizations included CITES, ICJ, IOM, ITU, OICT, PAHO, UNDP, UNFCCC, UNICEF, UNITAR, UNOG, UN Women, WIPO and WMO.

For any digital transformation to succeed, there needs to be engagement from the workforce. Users need to be ready to engage with the new tools, adapt and innovate.

Franca Vinci, Head of Learning Services, UNICC

Franca highlighted that the UN Digital Academy is designed to have the learner at the centre. It is user-friendly, can be accessed from anywhere, including offline and from locations with low bandwidth, at any time and from any device. The platform is easy to navigate and the content, available in English, French and Spanish, follows new micro-learning criteria: it is composed of a series of very short videos straight to the point.

UN digital academy to support working from home

The UN was already undergoing a digital transformation, but the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated the pace for implementing new technologies. Now, most of the employees worldwide are working from home and it is estimated that almost half will continue telecommuting after the crisis is over.

In response to the situation generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICC and Microsoft are offering all organizations three months of free access with a minimum 12-month subscription in 2020.

Microsoft and UNICC launched the UN Digital Academy at the UN Tech Huddle event organized by Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact (TSI) team on 2 June. Since then, ITU and ICJ have onboarded the platform, that now has over 1300 users.