UNICC and Microsoft presented the UN Digital Academy at the UN Tech Huddle event organized by Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact (TSI) team on 2 June. The UN Digital Academy is a new UNICC service – 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.

After an introduction by Microsoft’s Global UN Lead Alex Pinho, Shashank Rai, UNICC’s Chief Technology Officer provided an overview of the service to an audience of 150 ICT experts from different UN Agencies.

We wanted not only to strengthen the way we provide technology and technical support, but to empower UN employees to use themselves these technologies in the most effective ways.

Alex Pinho, Global UN Lead, Microsoft

Shashank explained that the UN Digital Academy hosts bite-sized courses curated by Microsoft that are meant for end-users to develop their digital and technology skills. As UNICC develops the platform, it is expected that it may evolve more broadly with additional quality content from other sources, including content produced by the UN, always tailored for the UN.

Alex highlighted how the UN Digital Academy was built as an UNICC and Microsoft investment, with the goal of creating a really affordable platform. Additionally, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICC and Microsoft are offering all organizations three months of free access with a minimum 12-month subscription in 2020.

This platform is coming at a very right point in time, when the pace of change is unprecedented. The next big challenge we all face is to always be ready, a continuous learning platform is a very important piece to achieve this goal.

Shashank Rai, Chief Technology Officer, UNICC

Apurva Chandra, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Philanthropies, offered a demo to showcase key features to participants and answered questions at the end of the presentation.

UNICC has participated in various Microsoft Tech for Social Impact UN Tech Huddles, now hosted virtually every two months. These events bring together ICT experts from different UN Agencies and Microsoft experts to share the latest cloud solutions and best practices to help UN Agencies digitally transform and accelerate the impact of their organization.