UN Permanent Missions Partner with DePaul
By Patricia A. Szczerba
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Within the past few months, more than two dozen Permanent Missions to the United Nations have posted new websites to communicate their messages to varied audiences around the world. Through these websites, officials in their home capitals are accessing General Assembly and Security Council documents, while Missions in New York are accessing more effectively each other’s policy statements. Tourists are obtaining maps and visa information, students are finding reference materials for their school papers and assignments, and the general public is learning more about these countries. And this is just the start. Two dozen more Missions will be added shortly to the list.
The websites have been created as a result of a unique collaboration between DePaul University and the Permanent Missions, as well as the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the UN Information and Technology Services Division (ITSD) at UN Headquarters. The project was developed towards the end of 2003 by UNITAR Senior Fellow Ahmad Kamal, former Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations, and Associate Dean Anne Morley of DePaul’s School of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems (CTI). The plan called for CTI faculty and students to design the basic prototypes and show Permanent Mission personnel how to input the data themselves so they could manage their own websites. The faculty would then be able to provide needed technical support, although each Mission would control and develop full expertise to manage its own site.
Over the following months, a dedicated and enthusiastic team of six faculty members and more than forty computer technology students collaborated with the Missions’ focal points in the design process. The first phase was led by Adam Steele, a CTI faculty member interested in human computer interaction, who put together a team of students to analyze and evaluate the existing Mission websites and consulted with UNITAR on other Missions’ actual needs. The team established a design criteria and an information architecture that would allow the creation of a flexible template to meet the requirements of diverse Permanent Missions. Massimo DiPierro, CTI system architect, then designed the basic architecture of the system, flexible enough to be adjusted to different Missions and languages, and above all a content manager that would be easy to operate by personnel relatively unfamiliar with the complexities of website maintenance. This was indeed the heart of the system and its success. To make things even easier, a detailed user-friendly training manual was also developed by Mr. DiPierro.
Luis Gallegos Chiriboga, Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations, and his staff provided leadership in coordinating Mission contacts and helped CTI students to start the dialogue with Mission focal points. With the design template and technical coordination in place, team project leaders—Gian Mario Besana, Laura McFall, Daniela Raicu and Raffaella Settimi—worked with students in inserting the content and designing the web pages, while Mr. DiPierro constantly fine tuned the system. Ms. Morley kept the project alive, on track and on time.
In designing the system, the CTI team had looked for a zero cost and low maintenance solution that would enable the Missions to develop, publish and update their websites without any external technical expertise. When they could not find a satisfactory solution, they developed the system themselves. One crucial ingredient is the availability of Open Source Software—a new way to license software. As long as the developers are acknowledged, the use of software requires no fees or royalties, but the software must be distributed together with its “source code”, which enables users to study and modify the software in order to adapt it to their needs. While part of the system was constituted by programmes written by DePaul faculty members, another part was made up of software programmes with catchy names like Linux and Apache and Spider and Python, all of which are released for free by their developers under the Open Source License.
By early summer, the websites were taking shape and on 15 June, UNITAR hosted a “CTI Day at the United Nations” for CTI faculty members and students. Every participating Mission sent staff to the faculty demonstrations of their websites, and the CTI teams visited each Mission for personal discussions with the ambassador and the focal point. After months of e-mail communications, it was exciting for both teams to meet face to face to review progress and plan additional material. During these meetings, it emerged that the continued presence of a CTI representative would be necessary to iron out initial teething problems with the websites. In consultation with Eduardo Blinder, Director of ITSD, a CTI student was posted to his office for the summer. Working out of the ITSD office, student EJ Finneran visited each Mission and provided the technical support that enabled staff to take full control of their own website. “Working at the UN was a great experience”, says Finneran. “It really gave me a perspective on things that go far beyond technology and software.” Another student, Sandra Tilmon, contributed to the project by maintaining public relations with the Missions that work in languages other than English. She was excited about using her language skills: “I was really happy to work on the web pages for Côte d’Ivoire in English and French.”
By October, the Permanent Missions had created 287 web pages with 873 links, which included speeches, statements, foreign policy documents, press releases, photographs, maps and, interestingly enough, the time in the EST format, making it easier for people outside the United States to contact them without waking them up in the middle of the night. While all Missions had started with a single design template, the system’s flexibility allowed each to customize its own website uniquely—for example, Côte d’Ivoire published its site in English and French, Bahrain in Arabic and English, and Costa Rica, first in Spanish and then expanding to include English.
At a high-level seminar hosted by UNITAR at UN Headquarters on 9 September, the full project and its potential were presented to a large audience by two DePaul faculty members. Word of the DePaul University and UNITAR collaboration had already spread around the United Nations, and with the great success in the initial phase, it became clear that additional Missions would also want to avail themselves of the opportunity for new websites. Phase Two was then launched by UNITAR and within days 26 Permanent Missions, along with the Permanent Observer Missions of two major regional organizations, had joined the project. Back in Chicago, Ms. Morley and the faculty regrouped in early October to recruit students for Phase Two, which should be completed in the spring of 2005.
The UN Mission website design project has been an extraordinary opportunity for CTI students and faculty. Ms. Morley expressed the sentiments of all participating team members: “This project enables us to engage our computer science students in a valuable real world project, and faculty appreciate working with the international community.” In summing up the project at the high-level seminar, Ambassador Kamal said: “Collaboration between DePaul University and the United Nations has existed for several years. This project is however unique. For the first time, Permanent Missions have benefited from an enormous devotion of time and energy by the faculty and students of the University, and the visible results are there for all to judge. DePaul University’s CTI can be proud of its efforts and of the great respect that it has justifiably earned. It is, in brief, a win-win situation for all.” |
| For further information on the project, see http://www.cti.depaul.edu.
For the website list, visit http://www.un.int/index-en/webs.html |
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| Patricia A. Szczerba is Associate Professor, School for New Learning at DePaul University in Chicago, and senior editor for global issues for The New York Times Almanac, addressing such topics as world health, world population, the United Nations and other related issues. |
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