The , the Pact for the Future, and the Seville Commitment each underscore the essential role of geospatial information in advancing national priorities and monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) resolution , entitled ‘Enhancing global geospatial information management arrangements’, reiterated “the importance of strengthening and enhancing the effectiveness of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management, particularly for the achievement of its operations focused on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework, to strengthen and ensure its continued effectiveness and benefits to all Member States.”
At the fifteenth session of the Committee of Experts in August 2025, the report of the Secretariat on enhancing global geospatial information management arrangements (), and the Committee’s subsequent , included considerations on addressing the programme of work and priorities of the Committee, as aligned with its endorsed Strategic Framework 2025-2030, vis-à-vis a coherent global capacity-development programme that goes beyond ad hoc activities. Further, in making , the Committee of Experts “appreciated the substantial efforts of the UN global geospatial centres in developing capacity through the implementation of the UN-IGIF […] and requested sustained capacity-development and training opportunities tailored to national operational needs and circumstances and aligned with the Strategic Framework of the Committee of Experts for the period 2025–2030.” The Committee of Experts further acknowledged “the progress made by the United Nations Global Geospatial Knowledge and Innovation Centre (UN-GGKIC) in finalizing its workplan, appreciated its alignment with the strategy of the High-level Group of the Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (HLG-IGIF), and urged the Centre and the Secretariat to focus on assisting Member States with practical, results-driven support for national implementation of the Framework.”
Within this broader context, the Committee of Experts emphasized the need to move from discussions toward practical modalities for delivery of capacity development that can support countries to operationalize and to accelerate the implementation of the UN-IGIF as the overarching Framework of the Committee of Experts. The need to transfer knowledge, improve methods and develop a global resource team able to support the implementation, scaling up, and sustained adoption of the UN-IGIF by Member States, and bridging the geospatial knowledge and capacity gap, was recognized.
The workshop on Knowledge transfer, Training and Capacity development on the United Nations Integrated Geospatial Information Framework responds directly to the context, by establishing a global pool of UN-IGIF subject matter experts capable of delivering sustained, practical support to Member States and ensuring the transfer of knowledge between international experts, Member States, regional committees to the UN-GGKIC. The design and scope of this workshop have been shaped based on substantive experience and concrete feedback gathered from recent regional and subregional workshops on UN-IGIF conducted across multiple geographic regions, which provided valuable insights and identified prevailing implementation challenges, national capacity gaps, and effective methodologies for country-level support into current implementation. The Workshop will enable the immediate requirement of transferring knowledge from original architect of the UN-IGIF to a new cohort of experts and to institutionalize this knowledge in the UN-GGKIC. It will further establish a global resource network to support Member States at all levels of implementation maturity, thereby translating high-level commitments into tangible national progress.
The Workshop aims to transfer knowledge to a sustainable pool of resource persons to support Member States in the implementation of UN-IGIF, consider current methodology improvements to the UN-IGIF, and scope a training of the trainer programme on the UN-IGIF. The weeklong Workshop represents a direct response to the Committee’s decisions to advance a global programme of national capacity development aligned with the UN-GGKIC’s overarching goal on UN-IGIF and strategic priorities of empowering Members States.
The overall objective of the Workshop is: (1) to further develop the capacity development programme on the UN-IGIF implementation through a pool of well-informed resource persons who can support countries in conceptualizing, understanding, adapting, and applying the UN-IGIF to national circumstances and priorities; (2) to consider improvements and methodological changes to the implementation of the UN-IGIF to improve its ‘ease of use’ and maturity, and ensure it remains current (as a living document) in the rapidly evolving geospatial landscape; (3) to consider key audience and priority areas for support leveraging the results of the global survey on the UN-IGIF; and (3) to support the design and conceptualization of a fully-fledged training of the trainer programme.
The Workshop aims to:
- transfer knowledge on the UN-IGIF implementation and equip a sustainable cohort of resource persons from UN staff, consultants, regional and national experts from Member States with the ability to deliver tailored one-on-one technical assistance to countries towards the development of Country-level Action Plans, aligned with national priorities and the SDGs.
- review and evaluate improvements and updates to be made to the existing suite of UN-IGIF documents, guides, and resource materials, and consider revising the methodological approaches for the ‘country-led, country-owned’ implementation approach, inclusive of related potential revision/consolidation of the 16-step approach to the development of Country-level Action Plans.
- scope and discuss the foundations for a fully-fledged ‘train-the-trainers’ programme on the implementation of UN-IGIF to ensure the currency and sustained implementation and adoption of the UN-IGIF