Find. connect. say hello to UN colleagues
Find, connect and say ‘Jambo!’ (‘Hello’ in Swahili) on your smart phone to United Nations colleagues from other organizations with the Jambo App developed by the UN Digital Solutions Centre (UN DSC). The UN DSC is a partnership between the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) with the support of UNICC.
Collaboration and communications between different UN Agencies are crucial to address global challenges and achieve the 2030 Agenda. Most UN Agencies have robust communications within their organizations, but until now a combined global directory has had limited contacts.
To facilitate cooperation, especially given the outbreak of COVID-19 with millions of people working remotely from their homes, the UN Digital Solutions Centre (UN DSC) has developed a phone book app enabling colleagues from across UN Agencies to find and contact each other.
The Jambo app, funded by the UN DSC and developed by UNICC in less than a month, currently contains contact information for staff at four member organizations – UNHCR, WFP, UNICC and UN Women. The UN DSC is offering all other UN entities to join for free.
The telephone directory app uses provided organizational credentials to log in. UN personnel can search for colleagues by name and find information such as email address, phone number, UN Agency and other standard Active Directory data. Jambo users can call or send messages and add notes about contacts through the device’s native phone and email functionalities.
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Additional features, such as alternate languages and a fully-encrypted chat, will soon be added to the application, with all systems hosted under UN Immunities and Privileges.
The UN DSC encourages all UN entities to say hello and join Jambo for a UN-wide contact information database, strengthening inter-agency collaboration and enabling each to better serve the global challenges related to their mandates.
The Jambo app is available to staff of participating UN Agencies for download at Google Play and Apple App Store.
About the digital solutions centre
The UN Digital Solutions Centre is operated in partnership by the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and is supported by the UN International Computing Centre (UNICC). By leveraging new technologies and UN expertise, the Digital Solutions Centre aims to create a suite of digital solutions that can be shared among UN Agencies to transform common business operations and streamline time-consuming transactional tasks. Solutions developed by WFP and UNHCR will be made available to the entire UN system.
Note: Additional features such as chat may be introduced as paid services in the future.
