UN Global Pulse
Annual Report
2020

A very long year.

The year 2020 was many things. UN Global Pulse (UNGP), along with the rest of the world found itself in an entirely predictable (and predicted) context. It was a year of asymmetries and competing logics. Offices, rather than being spaces for work, for creativity, and togetherness, became spaces of threat, of risk. Work and personal lives blurred, with our homes becoming makeshift offices and meeting rooms instead of intimate personal spaces. Reading a room became watching people through a virtual background and the constant fight with the unmute button.

Whilst we were adapting to a life at home, millions of the most vulnerable of our world were adapting to increased inequalities, to a stark lack of social security, to increased poverty and to death. It is in this context that we were asked by the UN Secretary-General’s office to assemble a team that could help the UN make sense of a rapidly changing world in all its complexity. This team needed to work out how technologies, partnerships, new streams of data and information, and innovation, could create new insights to fuel sensemaking and decision making.

The road has been both rewarding and challenging. From Jakarta to Helsinki, and from Kampala to New York, we learned a great deal in 2020. We got some things wrong and we were faced with failure. Some partnerships didn’t come to fruition. Funds did not flow as we hoped. In some cases, efforts to support were turned down. Data sets and algorithms didn’t always work, legal agreements stalled and timezones messed with scheduling. Some of these hurdles were acceptable because that’s the nature of innovation. You fail, but you learn.

You fail, but you iterate. You fail, but you share those lessons so that others can learn.

The good news is that there were a lot of successes. The team would build epidemiological models with UNHCR and OCHA, UCL and Durham University to support decision making in Cox’s Bazar refugee settlement. It would support WHO fight infodemics in Africa, countering often dangerous claims of cures, rumours of self-medication, and of anti-vaccine sentiment. With OHCHR the team would investigate the effects of the pandemic on some of the world’s most vulnerable people. With the Development Coordination Office (DCO) great lengths went to scaling existing tools and approaches. The Secretary-General and his Senior Management Group were briefed on progress, and the Deputy Secretary-General provided regular advice and guidance. The cadence of needs were matched with a revised approach from the UN Global Pulse team, and its partners.

Because we were not necessarily set up for crisis response, we created a Crisis Insights Team to test new approaches and ourselves and the way we worked. 

The year 2020 required us to simultaneously manage change in a pandemic and to respond to the needs emerging from the pandemic. It also made us realize that change needs to be a constant in our now normal. Among the many things we learned in 2020, some are worth including here. We learned that we lacked experience in working in crises settings, our instincts and reactions were not well-honed in terms of the cadence of demands or context. We lacked structures and the right kind of fluidity. Our back end processes, including operational support, were hugely under resourced and underappreciated. This meant that getting new team members on board, or new funding streams, partnerships, or procuring tools was incredibly difficult and time consuming.

And whilst we learned the above and we adapted, we also learned that investing in teams rather than gadgets is an important — an essential — part of transformation and reform. Critical un earmarked funds allowed us to adapt quickly and to provide security during global upheaval. Time and time again we learned the value of true innovation which requires investment in understanding challenges and problems before producing solutions.

We also learned about mental health. Our team worked on models that predicted the numbers of deaths from the COVID-19 disease. For some, this will have a profound effect on their worldview moving forwards. Many of us dealt with home-schooling, becoming teachers and educators, or becoming our own personal trainers. Some of us had to self isolate for months on end and to be alone, perhaps at times unhealthily finding solace only in work. We learned that as managers, our role must also deepen in understanding and empathy.

Building on the above and much more, we also learned that we wanted a different future for UNGP. 

This future refocuses our work but also our culture. We’re going to build on the last ten years of experimentation and engagement, and we’re going to broaden our work to include Futures and Foresight so we can better anticipate and hopefully influence the future of our world. We’re going to do more innovation that reaches beyond AI and data, so that we can contribute to an even more agile United Nations. We’re going to investigate how we can pivot towards Behavioural Science, and contribute to the ongoing digital transformation of the UN. We will innovate our operational backbone so that we can establish strong partnerships quicker. We will streamline our administration to have resources flow freely through our network to create better conditions for the network of humans to thrive.

The good news is that some of this good work has already started. Our newest team joined our network from Helsinki in 2020 and they’re already shaping what futures and foresight could look like. In Kampala, the team is using digital technologies to understand the effects of COVID on peacekeeping operations. In Jakarta the team has been fusing behavioural science and human centered design towards improving financial inclusion in Indonesia. And in New York, the team is working tirelessly with the Executive Office of the Secretary-General to tackle operational challenges, and alignment with overarching priorities.

If 2020 taught us one thing, it is that change is never easy, but always possible.