The United Nations University Institute in Macau, formerly the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST; ; Portuguese: ''Instituto Internacional para Tecnologia de Programação da Universidade das Nações Unidas'') and then United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society (UNU-CS; ), is a

United Nations University The is the think tank and academic arm of the United Nations. Headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, with diplomatic status as a UN institution, its mission is to help resolve list of global issues, global issues related to Human development ...

global think tank conducting research and training on digital technologies for sustainable development, encouraging data-driven and evidence-based actions and policies to achieve the

Sustainable Development Goals The ''2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development'', adopted by all United Nations (UN) members in 2015, created 17 world Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The aim of these global goals is "peace and prosperity for people and the planet" – wh ...

. UNU-Macau is located in

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

, China.

History

During 1987–1989,

conducted two studies regarding the need for a research and training centre for computing in the developing nations. The studies led to the decision of the Council of the UNU to establish in Macau the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology (UNU-IIST), which was founded on 12 March 1991 and opened its door in July 1992. UNU-IIST was created following the agreement between the UN, the governments of Macau, Portugal, and China. The Macao authorities also supplied the institute with its office premises, located in a heritage building Casa Silva Mendes, and subsidize fellow accommodation. As part of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...

, the institute was to address the pressing global problems of human survival, development and welfare by international co-operation, research and advanced training in software technology. After the

Transfer of sovereignty over Macau The handover of Macau from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China was at midnight on 20 December 1999. This event ended 442 years of Portuguese rule in the former settlement, which began in 1557. Macau was settled by Por ...

, UNU-IIST lost some level of visibility.

United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society

Eventually, in 2015, UNU decided to evolve the former IIST into a new Institute on Computing and Society (UNU-CS). UNU-CS intended to assist the

to achieve its agenda by working as a bridge between the UN and the international academic and public policy communities, training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists in computing, social sciences, and design for international development. The UNU-CS director Professor Michael L. Best was in charge of building the new succeeding institute "from scratch".

Goal

The goal of UNU-CS was "to nurture the next generation of

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

and

social scientists Social science (often rendered in the plural as the social sciences) is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among members within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the f ...

with the ability to participate in, shape and benefit from the rapid development of the global information society." A research start-up, UNU-CS aims to do the following: * Lead in investigating and inventing human-centred information and communication technologies addressing some of the priorities central to the United Nations such as: sustainability, development, governance, peace and security, human rights and human dignity. * Impact policymakers, within the UN system and beyond, through actionable knowledge and thought-leadership. * Nurture the next generation of inter-disciplinary computing, information and social scientists; and engineers in developing countries. * Embrace the enormous dynamism of the city of Macau and Pearl River Delta region while still working globally. According to its founding director, Professor Michael Best, his goal is "to raise the profile of the Institute as a centre of excellence in the UN system effectively responding to the needs of the developing world in this crucially important area".

Administration

The current director is Dr. Jingbo Huang. ;Former directors * Prof. Michael L. Best (2015–2018): directed the Technologies and International Development Lab as an associate professor at the

Sam Nunn School of International Affairs The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, at the Georgia Institute of Technology located in Atlanta, Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the south ...

and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also a co-founder and editor-in-chief emeritus of the journal ''

Information Technologies and International Development ''Information Technologies & International Development'' (''ITID'') is an open access print and online peer review, peer-reviewed academic journal covering studies on communication and international development, published quarterly by the USC Annen ...

'' and a faculty associate of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Professor Best leads the Global Computing column for

Communications of the ACM ''Communications of the ACM'' (''CACM'') is the monthly journal of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). History It was established in 1958, with Saul Rosen as its first managing editor. It is sent to all ACM members. Articles are i ...

. He holds a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

and has served as director of Media Lab Asia in India and head of the group at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

. * Prof. Peter Haddawy (2010–2015) * Dr. Mike Reed (2005–2010) * Dr. Chris Georges (2003-2005) (Director a.i) * Prof. Armando Haeberer (2002-2003) * Prof. Zhou Chaochen (1997–2002) * Prof. Dines Bjorner (1992–1997)

Laboratories

As of 2015, three "action-oriented research labs" were being developed: *Digital Peace Lab: ICTs for peacebuilding and to support human security, respond to crises, and mitigate human displacement. *Gender Tech Lab: ICTs that promote women's empowerment and enable sustainable community led development. *Small Data Lab: ICTs that create actionable knowledge from local data, empower citizens with data they trust, and improve global datasets with local data.

Center for Electronic Governance

The Center for Electronic Governance at UNU-IIST is an International Center of Excellence on

research Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...

and practice in Electronic Governance. Established in 2007, the center has been built upon the contribution of UNU-IIST to the eMacao Project (2004–2006) and eMacao Program (2007-now), a collaborative initiative to build and utilize a foundation for

Electronic Government E-government (known for electronic government) involves utilizing technology devices, such as computers and the Internet, for faster means of delivering public services to citizens and other persons in a country or region. E-government offer ...

in Macao SAR. Since 2010, it has become an official programme of UNU-IIST. The mission of the Center for Electronic Governance at UNU-IIST is to support governments in

developing countries A developing country is a sovereign state with a less-developed Secondary sector of the economy, industrial base and a lower Human Development Index (HDI) relative to developed countries. However, this definition is not universally agreed upon. ...

in strategic use of

technology Technology is the application of Conceptual model, conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible too ...

to transform the working of public organizations and their relationships with

citizens Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationality; ...

business Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or Trade, buying and selling Product (business), products (such as goods and Service (economics), services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for ...

es,

civil society Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere.policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an or ...

research,

capacity building Capacity building (or capacity development, capacity strengthening) is the improvement in an individual's or organization's facility (or capability) "to produce, perform or deploy". The terms capacity building and capacity development have often ...

and various forms of development –

strategy Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "troop leadership; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the " a ...

development,

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

development, institutional development and development of

communities of practice A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by Cognitive anthropology, cognitive anthropolo ...

. The Center, since July 2014, became United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance (UNU-EGOV), following the appointment and relocation from Macau to Guimarães of former members of the Center.

Teaching

The Center regularly organizes and conducts schools,

seminar A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some part ...

lecture A lecture (from ) is an oral presentation intended to present information or teach people about a particular subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Lectures are used to convey critical information, history, background, theo ...

s and

presentation A presentation conveys information from a speaker to an audience. Presentations are typically demonstrations, introduction, lecture, or speech meant to inform, persuade, inspire, motivate, build goodwill, or present a new idea/product. Presenta ...

s for

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

leaders, managers, researchers, educators, etc. on various aspects of Electronic Governance. Various courses and presentation materials from these events are available.

Conferences

The center established in 2007 and since then leads the organization of a series of International Conferences on Electronic Governance
ICEGOV
, with the first four editions in

Macao Macau or Macao is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most densely populated region in the world. Formerly a Portuguese colony, the ter ...

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

, Bogota, and

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

References

External links

United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society

United Nations University headquarters website

UNU-IIST Website

United Nations University (UNU)

United Nations University Vice-Rectorate in Europe (UNU-ViE)

United Nations University Office in Paris (UNU-OP)

United Nations University Office in New York (UNU-ONY)

Center for Electronic Governance at UNU-IIST

International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance
* Center for Electronic Governance: *
Publications
**Projects: **
Developing Electronic Governance in Afghanistan – Assessment, Strategy, Implementation – EGOV.AF
*** Developing Electronic Governance in Cameroon – Assessment, Strategy, Implementation – EGOV.CM **
Evaluation of Electronic Government Training by EU-China Information Society Project
**
Government Enterprise Architecture Framework
**
Government Information Sharing
**
Knowledge Management for Electronic Governance
**
Capacity Building for Electronic Governance
**
IT Leadership and Coordination
**Research: **
Development Models and Frameworks
**
Assessment, Evaluation and Measurement
**
Strategies, Architectures and Alignment
**
Software Infrastructure and Services
**
Knowledge Management and Leadership
**
International Comparative Studies
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