Giving Compass' Take:

• Many UN agencies already use Tableau to analyze the data they collect. This move will create standardization across agencies and allow for consistent, shareable data analysis. 

• How can other organizations follow this move to create cohesive data analysis? What does this move mean for the UN's larger data-sharing strategy?

• Find out how the UN is empowering women and girls through data use. 

The United Nations (UN) has announced an agreement to use visual analytics software supplied by Tableau as a global standard.

Individual UN agencies already use Tableau. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency are all customers.

The new agreement will allow agencies in the 193 member states across the UN system to access Tableau at UN headquarters, in regional offices and in “country missions”.

The UN’s assistant secretary-general and chief information technology officer, Atefeh Riazi, said in a press statement that the deal “allows us to embrace data by making world-class visual analytics available to UN offices globally”.

The “partnership” between the UN and Tableau would seem to be a step in the inter-governmental organisation’s data management programme. For example, Unicef, the UN relief agency for children and mothers in war zones, famine areas and other disaster regions, has been using data science to solve problems such as tracking refugees.

Read the full article on the UN-Tableau partnership by Brian McKenna at ComputerWeekly.com