The United Nations is an international organization mandated by its Member States with maintaining international peace and security, promoting economic and social development, and promoting and protecting human rights. The United Nations System consists of six subsidiary bodies which are responsible for the coordination and activities of the United Nations Secretariat and Specialized Agencies, Funds and Progremmes related to food security, agriculture stability environment, refugees, human rights, gender, sustainable settlement, protection of children and others.

The UN Secretariat and the Agencies extensively use GIS technology to enhance their operations, planning and organizing, monitoring, and decision-making activities. To provide the United Nations with the open-source tools, the UN Open GIS Initiative was established in 2016. The aim is to identify and develop Open Source GIS bundle that meets the requirements of the United Nations, taking full advantage of the experience of the partners. The Initiative consists of four active spirals (or working groups) where Spiral One is focusing on the development of core GIS applications, mobile applications and system integrations; Spiral Two is focusing on building capacity at the United Nations on use of open-source GIS technology; Spiral Three is focusing the development of geospatial analysis solutions; Spiral Four is focusing on developing tools for collecting and processing geospatial data. New Spirals are being considered to establish on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for geospatial analysis, 3D Globe solutions and Indoor GIS.

The UN Open GIS Initiative provides a unique opportunity to the open-source community for their contribution to United Nations operations in assisting peacekeeping operations, humanitarian response, refugee, promoting human rights and overall maintenance of international peace and security, and socio-economic development.