Organizational Resilience Management System (ORMS)
The UN Organizational Resilience Management System (UN ORMS) was approved by the General Assembly in June 2013 for the United Nations Secretariat by A/RES/67/254. Subsequently, in November 2014, the UN ORMS as set forth in CEB/2014/HLCM/17 was approved by the Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) as the emergency management framework for the member organizations of the UN System represented in the CEB.
Building a resilient organization is a cross-disciplinary and cross-functional endeavour and should be considered an integral and crucial component of the overall business management strategy of an organization. An effective ORMS engages all disciplines involved in emergency management that share the common goal of preventing and mitigating the impacts of emergencies on an organization’s people, assets and business by aligning and harmonizing their efforts. The General Assembly, by its resolution 67/254 A, determined that crisis management, security management, business continuity, information and communications technology (ICT) disaster recovery, medical emergency response, crisis communication and support to staff, survivors and families are the core elements of the United Nations resilience management system.
The UN ORMS requires a strong governance structure that guarantees the coordination, integration and harmonization of the diverse expertise and experience of the key elements and strengthens the organization’s capability to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from an emergency. The success of the approach also requires that personnel responsible for the application of the systemic approach by empowered to develop, communicate, implement and maintain the resilience management system. In general, all emergency management efforts of United Nations system organizations are developed in close coordination with the authorities of the respective host Governments.
next steps
The ORMS policy has been recently revised, and proposed changes has been presented to HLCM for consideration. Accordingly, the next progress report on the implementation of the ORMS, due to the General Assembly at the first part of its resumed seventy-sixth session, will reflect the strengthening of the policy, a description of the progress that has been made in the implementation of ORMS across the UN System since the last progress report in 2018, as well as significant lessons learned in the area of ORMS from the Covid-19 experience.