Publications

“The increasing role of e-government in promoting inclusive and participatory development has gone hand-in-hand with the growing demands for transparency and accountability in all regions of the world,” said Sha Zukang, UN DESA Under-Secretary-General in the newly released United Nations E-government Survey 2012.

The survey, prepared by UN DESA’s Division for Public Administration and Development Management, assesses Member States’ government web portals with a focus on the provision of e-information and e-services; these services include interactive, transactional, and e-participation features that connect governments and citizens.

Member States are ranked in accordance…

The Demographic Yearbook 2009-2010 is the sixty-first in a series published by the United Nations since 1948. It contains tables including a world summary of selected demographic statistics, statistics on the size, distribution and trends in national populations, fertility, foetal mortality, infant and maternal mortality, general mortality, nuptiality and divorce. Data are shown by urban/rural residence, as available. In addition, the volume provides Technical Notes, a synoptic table, a historical index and a listing of the issues of the Demographic Yearbook published to date.

The number of deaths of children under the age of five declined from 12.4 million in 1990 to 8.1 million in 2009, which means nearly 12,000 fewer children die each day. Some of the world’s poorest countries have also made impressive gains in the fight against poverty, but the least developed countries still lag in efforts to improve living standards.

This publication provides an overview of 145 successful innovations in governance and public administration from 50 countries that received the United Nations Public Service Awards, which is the most prestigious international recognition of excellence in public service.

The purpose of the series is to disseminate, through descriptive case studies, information about innovative practices by:

(i) looking at the problem that led to an innovation;

(ii) the solution that was designed and implemented to respond to the specific challenge;

(iii) the actors and steps involved in the innovation process, and

(iv) lessons learned. Learning more about how public…

SPFII, in cooperation with ILO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA and SCBD has published the Resource Kit on Indigenous Peoples Issues. The Kit is aimed UN Country Teams (UNCTs), and other development agents, providing them with guidance as to how to engage indigenous peoples and include their perspectives in development processes.

The financial fallout in the USA which rapidly turned into a global economic crisis underscored the interconnectedness of the global economy. The economic and financial crisis came on top of several other crises. Skyrocketing but highly volatile world food and energy prices evidenced a decades-long neglect of food agriculture and failure to rein in increasingly speculative energy markets. And the effects of climate change, which is already a clear and present danger whose consequences are being felt in many part of the world in the form of more frequent and severe droughts and excessive rainfall, are compounding other crises.

These multiple dramas have unfolded simultaneously and…

The world continues to make advances towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), despite the global economic downturn, but the rate of improvement remains too slow and countries must step up their efforts if the MDGs are to be achieved by their target date of 2015, a new United Nations report says. The annual assessment report, released today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, shows that the world has made huge strides in reducing extreme poverty...

The World e-Parliament Report 2010 examines how global and regional inter-parliamentary cooperation can exploit synergies among nations to help parliaments in developing countries bridge the digital divide by overcoming the barriers of limited resources and technical constraints. It proposes to the parliamentary and donor communities a shared framework for e-parliament based on strategic goals that serve democracy, good governance, and the attainment of the internationally agreed development goals.

The 2010 United Nations e-Government Survey: Leveraging e-government at a time of financial and economic crisis was completed in December 2009 and launched in early 2010. The report presented various roles for e-government in addressing the ongoing world financial and economic crisis. The public trust that is gained through transparency can be further enhanced through the free sharing of government data based on open standards.

Reconstructing Public Administration after Conflict

The 2010 World Public Sector Report brings to the fore a very critical issue - how to reconstruct public administration in post-conflict situations so as to enable it to promote peace and development in countries that have been affected by civil war and destruction. It is a question that has remained unresolved for decades and has brought poverty, despair, and death to people in many corners of the world. The Report shows that no progress can be made in promoting peace, development and protection of human rights unless appropriate governance and public administration institutions are established, leadership and human resources…

The United Nations Statistical Yearbook is an annual compilation of a wide range of international economic, social and environmental statistics for over 200 countries and areas of the world, compiled from sources including UN agencies and other international, national and specialized organizations. The fifty-second issue contains data available to the Statistics Division as of June 2008 and presents them in 68 tables on topics including: agriculture; balance of payments; communication; development assistance; education; energy; environment; finance and gender.

There are over 370 million indigenous people in some 90 countries, living in all regions of the world. The situation of indigenous peoples in many parts of the world is critical today. Poverty rates are significantly higher among indigenous peoples compared to other groups. While they constitute 5 per cent of the world's population, they are 15 per cent of the world's poor. Most indicators of well-being show that indigenous peoples suffer disproportinately.