Precisely eight years ago, on 23 May 2014, the United Nations University Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance sprang to life. Back in Lisbon, the then Prime Minister of Portugal - Pedro Passos Coelho - oversaw the signature of the Host Country and Bilateral agreements between the University and Portugal. David M. Malone, the Rector of UNU and Miguel Poiares Maduro, then Minister for Regional Development, signed the agreements that formally started UNU-EGOV.
A few weeks later, on 1 July 2014, the Operating Unit started its operations in the city of Guimarães. It is, up to this day, still the only United Nations agency in Portugal that is not located in Lisbon. The first team of just five people included three former members of the EGOV Programme at the UNU International Institute on Software Technology in Macao: Tomas Janowski, Elsa Estevez, and Sara Fernandes. Additionally, two locally-recruited administrative members joined in late August: Mário Meira and Mário Peixoto.
Since then, UNU-EGOV has gone through several important steps into becoming the next Institute of the UNU, while also enlarging its team, research outputs, projects, and publications. In the upcoming days, get to see and hear what some of our longest-standing personnel have to say about the journey so far through short videos on our social media pages: Facebook and LinkedIn.
