Empowering the UN workforce for an AI-driven future: The role of learning in system-wide transformation

Imagine a future where frontline humanitarian workers use AI tools to anticipate food insecurity, peacekeepers draw on predictive analytics to de-escalate conflict, and public servants leverage ethical algorithms to expand social protection. This future is being shaped now, and the United Nations (UN) must lead the way. 

In this era of rapid technological change, the UN faces a historic opportunity and tremendous responsibility to embed foresight, inclusion, and values into every digital stride it takes. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other frontier technologies are transforming how development is delivered and how institutions respond to crises. But this transformation will only succeed if the UN’s greatest asset: its people, are equipped to adapt, respond, and lead with integrity. 

A driving force in this shift is the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC): the UN’s learning and knowledge hub. As AI and automation reshape workflows, UNSSC commits to strengthening the capacity, agility, and ethical readiness of the UN workforce. 

A new mandate for learning 

Digital transformation requires upgrading skillsets and mindsets. As the UN marches toward 2030, it faces a profound challenge: how can we embed digital innovation in a way that strengthens our collective mission amidst complexity and volatility? 

The current digital transformation spans technical, organizational, and cultural changes. UN 2.0 demands that we rethink how the UN system learns, collaborates, and evolves in a constantly changing world. This is where UNSSC can provide its services based on its 20+ years of inter-agency experience and expertise where we learned it is not enough to simply deliver training and learning as the United Nations but to shape a collective intelligence and transformative leadership culture fit for a complex and volatile era. 

This means supporting the UN workforce to: 

• Navigate complex, cross-cutting mandates. 

• Engage ethically with emerging technologies. 

• Collaborate across agencies, disciplines, and geographies. 

• Continuously adapt to evolving risks and opportunities. 

UNSSC delivers on this mission by designing and delivering modular, inclusive, and future-ready learning pathways that align with both the UN 2.0 vision and the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Bridging the AI skills gap  

As AI becomes embedded in programmatic, operational, and policy functions, the demand for AI literacy across the UN system is increasing. But make no mistake that it only involves AI literacy. It further includes: 

• Understanding how AI affects decision-making, equity, and accountability. 

• Interrogating ethical implications across diverse contexts. 

• Applying AI principles to real-world challenges, from humanitarian logistics to climate adaptation. 

UNSSC addresses this gap through a system-wide learning approach that integrates AI into leadership development, foresight training, and ethics-based decision-making, soft skills that are increasingly even more important and demanded in an AI era. This means that staff are not only taught how AI works but how to use it responsibly, reflectively, and in alignment with UN values. 

UNSSC contributes to these by supporting the following through learning, knowledge and culture:  

• Strategic foresight and anticipatory governance. 

• AI risk and opportunity assessments. 

• Executive education for senior leaders navigating transformation. 

• Practical case-based learning anchored in field realities. 

UNSSC ensures that UN personnel are not passive users of technology, but active stewards of its impact. 

To further this mission, UNSSC recently joined the AI Skills for Good Coalition, which is a multi-stakeholder initiative  established with the aim of promoting equitable access to the benefits of AI, ensuring that its opportunities are shared broadly and inclusively. Through this coalition, UNSSC supports collaboration, resource sharing, and the integration of human rights and sustainable development principles into AI capacity-building efforts globally. 

Navigating shifting mandates and roles 

A defining feature of today’s UN workforce is its fluidity. As mandates shift and functions evolve, staff are increasingly expected to move across sectors and roles often under conditions of uncertainty, while demands and requirements to perform multiple functions increase. In response, UNSSC champions modular upskilling and interdisciplinary learning that supports agility. 

This includes: 

• Cross-functional leadership programmes tailored to country teams and agencies. 

• Tools to build just-in-time competencies. 

• Collaborative learning spaces where leaders tackle shared dilemmas with peers across the system. 

We are committed to creating safe, trusted, and high-impact spaces for peer learning to reinforce the UN’s ability to lead across boundaries and act as one. 

Connecting global norms to local practice 

UNSSC also plays a unique role in translating global frameworks into operational practice. As a knowledge broker, the Staff College supports the coherence and implementation of cross-cutting priorities across the system and with member states. 

For example: 

• UNSSC helps agencies integrate human rights-based design, data ethics, and accountability mechanisms into their digital strategies. 

• In collaboration with Resident Coordinators and regional teams, it helps bridge global policy with local capacity building, ensuring learning is responsive to the realities of least developed and conflict-affected contexts. 

• By fostering partnerships across academia, civil society, and government, it supports inclusive, values-based innovation that builds trust and avoids reinforcing existing inequalities. 

A UN workforce ready for the future we want 

A digitally transformed UN workforce is adaptive, ethically grounded, and digitally fluent at all levels.  This transformation will be supported by inclusive, context-aware learning centered on the people who bring the UN Charter to life every day. 

UNSSC is uniquely positioned to play a critical role in this learning revolution in the context of the United Nations. Its role is not only to build capacity, but to nurture a culture of lifelong learning, collaboration, and shared leadership across the UN system. 

We need to shape together the future where the UN workforce is empowered and confident to work alongside AI to deliver on its mandate and promise to leave no one behind.