Portal promotes global dialog

A portal designed to promote e-learning and collaboration has been launched by the United Nations' Global Compact Office. The first of its type at the United Nations, the portal creates a technology infrastructure through which Global Compact participants can share experiences and offer feedback to one another.

The Global Compact portal is built using mySAP Enterprise Portal, a Web-based framework from SAP, which manages all types of information including applications, databases, stored documents and Internet information. The portal was deployed to give the United Nations a more flexible infrastructure to accelerate the flow of information among Global Compact stakeholders, which include companies, civil society and labor groups, governments and U.N. agencies.

The technology will give Global Compact participants in the developed and developing world a tool to showcase their actions and initiatives.

Says Georg Kell, executive head of the Global Compact Office, "This establishes a powerful technology infrastructure to encourage the creation and sharing of critical content and information that is decentralized, thereby offering Global Compact participants from all over the world an opportunity to share activities and learn from others. For the national and local Global Compact networks that are springing up around the globe, the technology will give them a window on the world."

According to a press release from SAP, the portal provides a common user interface and easily navigable framework for organizing, publishing and locating information. It can also channel content users according to specific roles and interests. Companies that are required as Global Compact participants to submit annual examples of good practices can post their examples as and invite comment from other participants as well as the general public through a single, password-protected interface.

"We expect this new portal to foster more efficient communication among business leaders and other global stakeholders, in the promotion of responsible business practices and sustainable development," says Mokhethi Moshoeshoe, director of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship, based in South Africa, a participant in the Global Compact. "This sort of communication is critical to encourage collaboration, dialogue and the dissemination of good practices."