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| Client: | The United Nations High Commission for Refugees |
| Result: | A new ICT Strategic Plan for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees that is understood, communicated, achievable and measurable. Chartwell was chosen by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) headquartered in Geneva to guide their ICT management team through a major organizational change, and help them prepare a three year strategic plan for making significant improvements to strengthen the contribution of information and communications technologies (ICT) to the UN agency’s mission, operations, management and outcomes. |
Why they needed Chartwell:
Founded in 1948, UNHCR experienced a massive increase in the past 15 years in global demand for its services protecting refugees and internally displaced persons in times of conflict and natural disaster.
Operating in more than 300 locations around the world, but funded primarily by independent donations from states and philanthropic organizations, UNHCR investments in ICT did not keep pace with equivalent humanitarian aid and crisis response organizations, let alone public and private sector organizations in general.
As a result, UNCHR could not demonstrate productivity improvements and was unable to respond to increasing donor demands for information concerning its performance and financial accountability - thus placing itself at a disadvantage in the global competition for humanitarian aid funding.
Our Response:
Chartwell’s Management Reference Model for Information Services (MRM/IS) played a major part in the engagement, making it possible for the different ICT-related units spread throughout the agency to come to a common understanding of how a modern ICT function should be organized, managed and measured on an enterprise-wide basis.
Chartwell’s approach to strategic ICT planning was also taken up successfully, resulting in a plan for investing in information, applications and technical infrastructure based on enterprise-wide architectures, and increasing ICT service quality leading towards greater aid program productivity.
The Results:
The result has been a new strategic plan that features much greater embedding (routine participation by ICT professionals in agency operational planning and crisis response teams), a major emphasis on developing new information to measure and manage agency outcomes, and a new senior executive governance function to set priorities and determine financial appropriations for ICT investments.
