Innovation Library

The Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM) includes a range of quantitative and qualitative questions designed to gather information about different dimensions related to a country’s AI ecosystem, including the legal and regulatory, social and cultural, economic, scientific and educational, and technological and infrastructural dimensions.

The report Empowering small-scale farmers through digital innovation: Insights from the Near East and North Africa region examines how digital technologies can support productivity, resilience and inclusion among small-scale farmers across the Near East and North Africa.

Harnessing AI to more effectively and efficiently enhance protection and solutions for forcibly displaced and stateless people and to deliver improved, data-driven responses across humanitarian contexts – people-centred and guided by principles of safety and accountability.

"Where do you start when preparing a country for the AI era?" This is a question more governments and investors are asking. The World Bank Group's new handbook, Accelerating Artificial Intelligence Investment in Emerging Markets, offers exactly that: a practical roadmap for building an AI ecosystem from the ground up that drives growth and jobs.

UN Blockchain Talks #8 explored whether stablecoins can support financial inclusion at the last mile, using a scenario-based discussion centered on Mariama, a fictional character representing real users outside formal banking systems. Moderated by Ali Al-Zuhairi of UNDP Alternative Finance Lab, the session brought together Dr. Margie Cheesman, Stephanie Joseph, and Freedom Pigott to discuss stablecoins, remittances, cash-out mechanisms, compliance, local infrastructure, data privacy, and the practical conditions needed for digital payments to work safely and reliably in remote contexts.

The UN 2.0 Digital and Data Solutions Expo is your chance to see practical digital and data solutions in action, hear directly from the teams behind them, and connect with colleagues working on similar challenges across the UN system.

The Core Principles for Meaningful Youth Participation in Intergovernmental Processes and Across the Work of the United Nations is a guidance document developed under Action 37(d) of the Pact for the Future, designed to move youth engagement in UN processes beyond tokenism toward genuine inclusion. Co-created through broad consultations involving Member States, UN entities, young people, and youth organizations, the publication offers non-binding principles aimed at making youth participation more meaningful, representative, inclusive, and safe across the full scope of UN work.

The new Playbook on Digital Innovation for Supporting Families, developed by the Digital Expert Group convened by UNICEF and Van Leer Foundation, offers a practical roadmap to design more human-centered, inclusive, and scalable digital support systems. From trusted information and skill-building to community connection and access to services, it shows how digital innovation can better serve families everywhere.

UN Blockchain Talks #7 looks at where blockchain is proving useful across environmental sustainability in practical terms. The conversation moves through tokenized carbon credits, parametric climate insurance for smallholder farmers, digital systems for climate adaptation finance, renewable energy certificates, and tokenized nature assets, with a shared focus on trust, traceability, auditability, and real implementation challenges.

This note examines how agentic AI may affect payment systems, focusing on authorization, liquidity, settlement, compliance, and resilience. It highlights a key tension between probabilistic AI behavior and the deterministic requirements of payment infrastructures.

Explore impactful innovations across 45 UN Entities!

This UNU Rector AI Lecture Series episode shows how knowledge institutions and the UN advance responsible AI governance.

Driving progress and hope through innovation in humanitarian response

UNESCO and the Thomson Reuters Foundation are launching today a global report "Responsible AI in practice" based on information gathered from 3,000 companies about the Artificial Intelligence-related adoption and strategies. It finds that, as AI development and adoption accelerates rapidly in the private sector, nearly half of the companies (44%) reported having an AI strategy. One in ten companies is also publicly committed to adhering to an AI governance framework.

The UN 2.0 Data & Digital Solutions Expo invites participants to explore eight innovative UN and facilitates connections with practitioners while experiencing data-driven solutions in action.

The document presents a comprehensive perspective on public sector innovation as a driver of State transformation

This paper presents an operating model for integrating BeSci throughout the program cycle (diagnose, design, test, scale, monitor, and evaluate), supported by a methods toolkit and guidance for rapid learning using administrative and survey data (both digital and manual). It also outlines safeguards for responsible implementation, including a human rights-based approach, transparency and accountability, inclusion and accessibility by design, and evaluation standards proportionate to risk, scale, and potential harm.

On many aspects, digital identity does not fail because the tech is not enough, or teams lack ambition. Rather, it fails when trust, privacy, governance, and implementation realities are treated as add-ons. For Blockchain Talks #5, we are bringing together three complementary perspectives to make the discussion concrete and the lessons valuable.

This paper introduces StatGPT, an initiative by the IMF Statistics Department that leverages LLMs not to generate statistics, but to generate structured queries against APIs of official statistical agencies. StatGPT ensures that users receive the exact published figures, every time, while benefiting from natural language interaction.

Developed under FAO’s RENOFARM (Reduce the Need for Antimicrobials on Farms for Sustainable Agrifood Systems Transformation) initiative, this practical manual serves as a complementary resource for livestock Farmer Field School (FFS) facilitators.

The World Health Organization guidance and toolkit for scaling innovations in public health systems offer an evidence-based, practical framework to assist governments to lead, coordinate and sustain the scaling of health innovations – specifically, to steward a move from promising pilots to system-wide adoption, grounded in principles of health system strengthening and country ownership. It is designed primarily for ministries, national and subnational agencies, and public sector institutions involved in public health. At the same time, it serves as a strategic resource for engaging nongovernmental actors, private sector innovators and academic partners to work in alignment with public objectives.

This WHO guideline provides Member States with evidence-based recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to improve school food environments.

UNICEF's latest ABC’s of SBC podcast episode, explore behavioural data science: How combining behavioural theory with new data methods can reveal patterns, frictions, and hidden levers in datasets that weren’t necessarily collected with human behaviour in mind.

This session spotlights AI Initiatives featured in the recently launched UN AI Resource Hub, a collaborative effort by UNDP, ITU, and UNESCO.

The publication provides a snapshot of UNDP’s blockchain practice, exploring how UNDP is engaging with blockchain technologies as part of its broader effort to support inclusive, future-ready public systems.