Internship: Week6

An internship journal; placement United Nations Information Services Division 15 – 20 June, 2008

This week, I mostly worked on EIP on the ICT topic. First I thought there might be a lot of online information which is useful for the bulletin, surprisingly, those publications/information are either a bit out-of-date or commercially available.

Regarding the web accessibility, I had a rehearsal at the middle of the week. Although I’d made lot of changes last week, still, there are many minor points need some adjustments. This is not my first presentation on such topic though, I am still worried especially when all audiences are strangers with seniority. Having a rehearsal helped me feel more confident and the comments and close supervision of the officer are not useful only for this particular event, it can be applicable to other presentations either in academic or professional path.

Internship: Week5

An internship journal; placement United Nations Information Services Division 9 – 13 June, 2008

I started this week by revising two documents that were prepared by the outsourced company for the UNESCAP regarding accesibility issues. One paper is a new guidelines proposed for the UN web sites to follow while the other was the report of web assessment which have been conducted in the past four years. I found these documents are very similar to the one I have done and much work are redundant. However, since these documents contain lot of detail and I need time to investigate more. Nonetheless, I informed this to the supervisor and he agreed to let me spend a bit more time with these files.

Since now the UN has a web site revamp project and to create a standard for the UN web site, the accessibility issue, therefore, becomes one criteria. They would like to study the possibility and ways of implementation. To adopt this idea, UNIS tries to conduct research as well as find a good practice. In the classrooms, I studied only the theory how to make accessible web site, but not so many discussions of the implementation stage. So I brought this issue to discuss and ask for more opinion with the officer. We had a brief talk and exchanging ideas. I learnt many things that I never think about. For example, there are lot of factors to be pondered when revamping the web site, such as the recruitment of staff who have appropriate skill, preparation of infrastructure and equipments, and so forth.
He endded his talk by assigning me to give presentation about web accessibility for the UNIS officers and staff in one of the internal meeting. On the following day, I had drafted an outline of the presentation forhim to review and put into a power point ready for the rehearsal next week!

Internship: Week4

An internship journal; placement United Nations Information Services Division 2 – 6 June, 2008

I switched my major work this week to the library activity service: electronic Information Program. My task is to harvest/retrieve information on the internet from any public sources , particularly in the PDF format. I am accustomed to such work from the former job; I had to find regional news and to update events. This task, however, although they are similar in nature, I have to familiarize myself with many areas (five priorities of the UNESCAP: environment and sustainable development, ICT, poverty reduction, trade and investment, and Emerging social issues). Moreover, the work I used to deal with focused only the disabilities related issues unlike these five huge topics. I think at least it takes time to be familiar with in order to get the news/information that are closest to the needs of the certain target groups. Nonetheless, I have learnt lot of things and enjoyed reading information that I never pay attention to.

I started working on environment and sustainable development topic by reviewing the previous issue of the last month publication. At first, I had struggled with the name of organization where I could search for relevant documents; it would be nice if they have the database containing the list of sources where the data used to be retrieved. This makes me think about the concept of organizational memory I learnt in SLIS.

As started from no where (which almost becomes the norm of surfing the net), Google seems to be the best way of searching any required information for us. I do not know what is the most appropriate method of retreiving information, I only follow my old way: grasping first few pages of the result. Despite the fact, this is not bad approach, and I, at least, got some related documents. I have compiled the information I found into a list, managed them in order, and then ready for the submission. I also made a small database keeping names and URLs of information I have found, hopefully this would be a good reference for the future.

Internship: week3

An internship journal; placement United Nations Information Services Division 26 – 30 May, 2008

This week, I am more familiar with the work atmosphere. Due to the limitation of the space, I was moved to the library (also under UNIS) and work in the administrative division. Nonetheless, most of the tasks are still dealing with the web master and accessibility issue. Actually, sitting in the library is not bad; allowing me to indirectly observe the internal services to the UN staff and officers.

I continue writing the evaluation report for the UN web site. This week, trying to find strengths and weaknesses together with good and bad example from other organizations. At the middle of the week (after submission of the 50% progress report), I was asked to revised the whole paper due to the rigidity and too much academic style of writing, which is not suited to the real work practice especially for the managerial team. Therefore, I spent the rest of the week making changes.

Part of this mistake, I personally view it as the sort of misunderstanding and unclear communication. My first draft, I addressed to the web developer as the target audience while it should be to the senior officers who do not have much technical skills. Frequency of communication is another part of the mistake. I should not have waited until half of the work has been done. However, this is not a big deal, I can build something up from the existing file. This is just my reflection twards the work/project management.

Internship: week1

An internship journal; placement United Nations Information Services Division
May 15-16, 2008

I spent most of the time of these two days on the orientation and introduction with other staff within the division. Since the United Nations is the large organization, all working process is run through the formal channel.

I spent the whole morning of my first day of internship with the Training Division on reporting, checking all relevant official documents for the security issues, touring around the UN buildings, and get introduced to the UNIS and all other officers.
After introduction, they set one temporary table for me, then I started to explore their system—their technological infrastructure. In addition, I met a web master of UNESCAP whom would supervise me regarding the web site revision and assessment. We briefly discussed about the job I could possiblywork on, and finally concluded with the accessibility checkup as well as other relevant issues.

On the following day, I was moved to the UN Library and get introduced with the officers there. I attended a small meeting, getting to know more about the library activities and was interested with the work of Electronic Information Product (EIP).
www.unsystem.org/es
Then part of my assignments is to harvest news to support this project. I think such activities is an effective way to develop the UN officers/staff’s knowledge; the information is waiting right at their fingers’ click! Nonetheless, there is no guarantee in term of ROI—how much people would benefit from the service, and if it is worth funding? This would be such a challenge for any information service providers and if possible, I would like to investigate more in term of implementation/real practice.

On Friday’s afternoon, I attended the meeting concerning the web site accessibility. There was an outsourcing expert to give lecture. As the first-hand experienced user, I participated in the session and had chance to demonstrate the web access with screen reader application. In the meeting, there were officers from disability divisions joining as well. Therefore, it was a good opportunity to discussed weaknesses of the UN Web site and find solution for mutual implementation in the future.

Internship: week2

An internship journal; placement United Nations Information Services Division
May 20-23, 2008

On 20th May, I attended the conference organized by the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology and Chulalongkorn University at the Mercure Hotel. The seminar was about the Promotion of the Thai Web Accessibility guidelines and its implementation. There were about a hundred participants, most of them came from the government agencies. Apart from gaining more knowledge about global trends of accessibility, it was a good chance to build a network among people who are not in the disability field.

For the rest of the week, I have been preparing an outline of the report which might be presented to the managerial team for consideration of the long-term project and future funding. I started by surfing the UN and ESCAP web sites, trying to understand its structures and its content. This took my time for a while to get used to the interface since there are lots of information with poor organization and complicated page layout.

The report begins with the introduction of the web accessibility followed by its simple guidelines/principles. Moreover, some web pages (both belong to UN and ouside the UN) will be given as good and bad examples for better understanding. In the last section of the report, some improvements that would enhance the accessibility of the UNESCAP web site will be discussed for further development along with possible implementation.

At lunch time, I get to know more staff; this is very good social networking. They discussed about internal issues so that I could learn more about the working process of UN administration in general.