COVID-19 fundamentally changed our ways of working. We had to adapt to working remotely, postpone or cancel duty travel, learn how to move events to virtual platforms, balance home, family and work responsibilities, and much more. The pandemic presents unprecedented challenges, but also opportunities for collaboration, innovation, learning and transforming the UN together.

• When the dust settles, what has this difficult time taught us that we want to hold on to?
• What challenges will we need to continue to navigate?
• What do we think about all these issues?

The Reimagine the UN Together Challenge was launched on 8 July 2020. This crowd-sourcing challenge sought to leverage the creativity, experience and skills of colleagues from across the system, inviting all personnel to submit ideas and solutions to support our collective reimagining of the UN. 

Complementing and in parallel to the Challenge, a Dialogue Series was also conducted to “deep-dive” into certain topics and provide a platform to those who may not be ready or able to submit an idea through the challenge related to the pandemic and post-COVID workplace. It also facilitated discussion on sensitive topics or aspects that may not have a clear "solution".

3 big challenges

These themes helped define a clear scope for both the innovation challenge and dialogues. We realize that there were many topics and issues that may interest personnel across diverse entities, environments, etc., however a limited scope was defined to minimize the impact on personnel time and resources and ensure these areas were given the proper focus and attention. Lessons learned will be used to improve the overall process, launch other challenges and expand the dialogue series. The vision is to mainstream this process and ensure ongoing innovation and dialogue across the system.

The challenge and dialogue series were developed and driven by an alliance of interested individuals, networks and departments across the UN system, such as the UN Development Coordination Office, the UN Innovation Network, #NewWork, the UN System Staff College, Young UN: Agents for Change, and the Office of Information and Communications Technology, in consultation with staff unions and other key bodies.