Expression of Interest (EOI) at the United Nations Secretariat

The United Nations Secretariat is one of the six major organs of the United Nations, with the others being the General Assembly; the Security Council; the Economic and Social Council; the defunct Trusteeship Council; and the International Court of Justice. The Secretariat is the United Nations' executive arm. The United Nations Secretariat carries out the day-to-day work of the UN as mandated by the General Assembly and the Organization's other main organs.

• The United Nations (UN) seeks an off-the-shelf, cloud-based, software-as-a-service open innovation & crowdsourcing platform allowing the UN to focus on engaging with people inside the UN and outside including with the general public, academia, civil society, governments and other institutions.
• The platform will be used to support the operation of the UN's innovation and crowdsourcing platforms such as Unite Ideas https://ideas.unite.un.org (Public innovation) and Unite Spark https://spark.unite.un.org (Internal institutional innovation by UN personnel) to engage UN personnel and the general public and civilsociety worldwide towards solving issues affecting people and the environment in our planet. These platforms attract motivated people and organizations worldwide who volunteer to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
• The platform should be configurable to respond the requirements of the UN but shall not require any custom programming or development.
• The software platform should support various aspects of a corporate innovation programme. From encouraging the generation, evaluation, and selection of ideas, to managing the process of taking ideas through to final realization. The system targets users including internal employee constituencies (large and small groups), and external ones (general-public) through communities, open innovation, and crowdsourcing.
• The software should include facilitation of workgroups, ideation and brainstorming workshops, events (e.g. hackathons, pitch sessions, dragon’s-dens), challenges and continuous engagement with these communities through mailing lists, messaging, and notifications.
• The software should include mechanisms for capturing and aggregating the outcomes of these forms of engagement, for sifting, filtering, organizing and systematically evaluating solutions, assessing the risks, rewards, costs, and benefits of different proposals, and for verifying alignment of these with business priorities and goals.

• Service model & level:
  • The solution shall be an off-the-shelf, software-as-a-service platform.
  • The platform shall be configurable to respond the requirements of the United Nations but shall not require any custom programming or development.
  • The service provider shall provide help desk and configuration support, as well as self-training and comprehensive online help materials and documentation (user guides, videos, tutorials, etc.) for administrators and users.
  • The platform shall be "Available" (users are able to login and perform all functions of the platform) to the users 99.5% of the time excluding “Scheduled downtime”. Scheduled downtime may occur for less than an hour per quarter.
• Technical and personal data requirements:
  • The vendor shall provide written documentation indicating that the platform is compliant with the cybersecurity controls in document: UN.2.8b Information Security Controls Level 2
  • The vendor shall provide 3rd party penetration testing reports from reputable independent cybersecurity auditors. The testing must not be more than 1 year old and must be conducted annually at a minimum.
  • The vendor shall provide a written disaster recovery and business continuity plan.
  • The vendor shall provide written system architecture and general technical documentation for the platform, including diagrams and software components.
  • The vendor shall provide documentation indicating compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.
  • The vendor shall provide one platform instance for development or stagging and one platform instance for production.
  • Global access: the vendor shall not restrict user access to the platform from any location worldwide (including for example from Syria, Sudan, North Korea, Iran, and other UN Member States).
  • The vendor shall provide written documentation indicating that the platform adheres to the UN system Principles on Personal Data Protection and Privacy.
  • For this evaluation, the vendor shall provide to the UN test accounts for a demonstration platform displaying all the required features.
  • Testing: Prior to awarding a contract, the UN might conduct cybersecurity, penetration, and accessibility tests on the demonstration platform.

• Companies can only participate in solicitations of the UN Secretariat after completing their registration (free of charge) at the United Nations Global Marketplace (www.ungm.org).
• As you express interest in the planned solicitation by submitting this response form, please verify that your company is registered under its full legal name on the United Nations Global Marketplace (www.ungm.org) and that your application has been submitted to the UN Secretariat.
• While companies can participate in solicitations after completion of registration at Basic Level, we strongly recommend all companies to register at least at Level 1 under the United Nations Secretariat prior to participating in any solicitations.