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Ernst Décsey

Intranet Leader, United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees

Biography

Ernst Décsey

Ernst has been working for UNHCR in Geneva Switzerland for the past 12 years. Prior to that, he worked as a freelance consultant in the web industry.

Recent projects include the selection and implementation of a Web Content Management System (WCMS) to support UNHCR intranet, the redesign of UNHCR intranet, its migration to the WCMS and the set up of policies and governance around the intranet.

Current and future projects include the decentralization of content publishing, the set up of an authoring community and the introduction of social collaboration tools to support UNHCR operations throughout the world.

With a background in international relations, Ernst’s focus is primarily on the strategic and functional side of systems.

Ernst loves to cycle to work in the morning, along Geneva lake side and go ski to surrounding mountains in the winter. If you need advices on where to eat the best fondue in Geneva, ask him :)

United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees

United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is mandated to lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide. Its primary purpose is to safeguard the rights and well-being of refugees. It strives to ensure that everyone can exercise the right to seek asylum and find safe refuge in another State, with the option to return home voluntarily, integrate locally or to resettle in a third country.

In more than five decades, the agency has helped an estimated 50 million people restart their lives. Today, a staff of around 6,300 people in more than 110 countries continues to help 32.9 million persons.

Presentation

One year of decentralized content publishing: did we meet our objectives?

Case: United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees

Track: Intranet
Conference Day #1, Wednesday November 3rd, 10.30-12.00

For more than 10 years, publications on UNHCR Intranet were centrally managed. In September 2009, a new Intranet was launched, based on the fundamental principle of decentralized content publishing.

Learn how the intranet team facilitated this change by:

  • Establishing a governance framework
  • Taking on a number of different processes to decentralize content publishing
  • Setting up an authoring community to support more than 60 content publishers

Ernst will share examples, explain how responsive the organization was, and share valuable lessons learned.

See slides online

Working with IT - Romance, Marriage or Divorce?

Case: United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees

Track: Web project management
Conference Day #1, Wednesday November 3rd, 16.00-17.00

We often need to bring together a wide range of skills in order to build and operate successful websites: design, editorial, technical, project management, etc.  In most organisations, these skills are scattered across a number of departments – IT, Communications, Marketing, and so on – each with different drivers, objectives, mindsets and processes.  This can lead to a lot of conflict.  In particular, the divide between IT and other groups is often very large.

This session will look at some of the drivers that apply to people in IT.  It will also look at the psychology of some typical roles in IT, and how this complements the psychology of some of the other roles involved with web development.  We’ll also have some open discussion on how to deal with the conflicts that these differences in perspective can cause.

See slides online

Demo: Where are the Senior Management Committee today?

Case: United Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees

Track: Intranet
Conference Day #1, Wednesday November 3rd, 13.00-14.00

Popular feature showing the where about of Senior Management Committee on the intranet. Quick and easy to implement.

See slides online

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