Individual Consultancy – Information Management System Senior Advisor, Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Remote Based REQ#546196

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child, education…

Over the last year ECW has developed a data and information management system (‘system’ in short henceforth). As part of this, a comprehensive database that stores all grant-related information has been established through an online central filing location (Sharepoint). A comprehensive dataset with reporting data on grantees’ programme results and number of children reached since inception, as well as dashboards have been built. ECW also developed formatted templates to capture grant’s result framework, financial and risk information both at application and reporting phase. Additionally, a reporting tracking system has been developed to assist Grants Management, Finance, Risk and M&E to monitor the flow of incoming reports and the status of the reports. Although the system is promising, a phased piloting is still ongoing. Its strengthening and regular maintenance is therefore necessary, particularly for the new annual reporting windows where ECW supported grantees will share their reports as well as for the increasing number of new grants whose information needs to be captured for supporting their implementation throughout the grant-cycle. 

How can you make a difference?

ECW is seeking the services of an individual consultant to strengthen ECW’s existing grant, results, risk and financial data information management system that supports the:

• Further development and use of grant application and reporting templates and processes.  Timeline January 2022                          
• Notification, quality assurance, approval, and report tracking system. Timeline – Ongoing
• Automation and aggregation of grant, result, risk, and financial data. Timeline February and June 2022
• Storage and accessibility of data and grant documentation. Timeline TBC
• Data analysis and visualisation via for example automated reporting and dashboards. Timeline March – August 2022 
• Integration of data and information with ECWs website and SharePoint information systems Timeline March and April 2022
• Documentation management and capacity development. Timeline April – December 2022

The system must be supported with appropriate documentation and capacity development of ECW staff.

The following points are important to recognise and consider during the consultancy and its scope of work:

• The data and information management system is established on the online Education Cannot Wait SharePoint, which is a separate information management storage within the UNICEF IT infrastructure that runs on Microsoft’s 365 system. The system functions and will continue to function within this infrastructure.
• ECW staff members can also access the UNICEF SharePoint site which is used for storing and sharing documents within ECW and with UNICEF colleagues.
• The data stored on the system will have to be safeguarded so that only those authorized can access, change, or add data. At the same time documents/folders are envisioned to be shared with external audiences.
• The system shall need to synchronise data to the ECW webpage and other systems.

Methodology and management arrangements:

The individual consultant should not build a new system but improve and strengthen the existing one. The individual consultants will report to the Chief of Finance and Operations and work closely with other ECW teams.

The system is and will always be property of ECW; the data handled by the system belongs to ECW and cannot be used by third parties or the company/consultant; in no way can data be held or distributed by the contractor during or after the completion of the assignment.

There will be one weekly meeting on the progress towards the overall targets and coordination of requests. In addition, there will be separate meetings between the consultant and the respective teams who have requested the deliverables and outputs listed below. Most ECW staff members are based in Geneva or New York and the consultant should be able to participate in meetings aligned with the standard working hours of these two locations (often from 8 am – 12 noon EST).

Key outputs:

 Further development and use of grant application and reporting templates and processes.

The consultant is expected to monitor, review, and improve the 2021 developed result, financial and risk grant application and reporting templates and processes. These templates are designed, piloted, and used by grantees to apply and report on the active grants of 2021. The result application and reporting template includes basic information about the grant, results framework, standard indicators, and children reached targets and achievements. The financial application and reporting template include information about the budget and expenditure of the grant. These templates form the basis for the data automation processes.

Deliverables:

• Updated 2022 result application and reporting template.
• Updated 2022 financial application and reporting template.
• Updated 2022 risk assessment matrix and reporting template

Notification, quality assurance, approval, and report tracking system

The consultant is expected to assure that result, financial and risk data, as well as other essential grant-related and grantee-related data from reports, requests and other communication means, is processed accurately and timely via strengthening the automation function of the data information management system. This process needs to include a quality assurance and approval check from the required ECW colleagues involved in the grant management cycle. Result, financial and risk data as well as basic grant information is expected to be connected and generate required and to be developed result, financial and risk reporting.

Deliverables:

• Data combiners process and aggregate report, questionnaire and other data information automatically.
• Quality assurance and approval steps are integrated into the data automation processes.
• Automated reporting and querying are functioning as required.

Improvement in security, storage and accessibility of data and grant documentation

The consultant is expected to improve the security, storage and accessibility of grant related data and documentation by comprehensively analysing and understanding the manners in which individual ECW staff members need access to specific sets of data. In this process, the consultant would be required to revitalize the use of other data/file sharing platforms available to ECW staff members such as UNICEF SharePoint.

Deliverables:

• Establish a clear procedure and protocol for importing, viewing exporting, editing, and downloading data, including a quality control workflow of grants-related information.
• Develop a system for ECW Grants Management to give oversight of the use of the overall database.
• Clarify the usage of both SharePoint (UNICEF and ECW) in such a manner that both would be fully utilized to assist the work and respond to the needs of the ECW Secretariat. Clean up and re-organize, to this end, the ECW site under UNICEF SharePoint in accordance with the needs of the ECW Secretariat including collaborative file archival and sharing system.

Data analysis and visualisation via for example automated queries, reports, and dashboards

From the collected and processed grants (results, financial and risk) data, the consultant is expected to strengthen the data analysis and visualisation processes. The analysis and visualisations aim to support ECW staff and Secretariat in the development, support to, learning from, and reporting towards its results-framework targets and its programmes. A substantial part of this part of the work is to provide input into the production of ECWs annal results report (ARR) (https://www.educationcannotwait.org/annual-report-2020/)

Deliverables:

• Finalize the Finance Overview combining the three areas of contribution tracking, expenditure tracking (both completed in phase I) and financial planning.
• Build a corporate risk dashboard, enhance portfolio-level risk dashboard and establish a mechanism to analyse risk trends over time.
• Support towards the production of the ARR2021.
• Develop a gender dashboard to track and analyse the type of gender interventions supported by ECW investments

Integration of data and information with ECW website and other related information repositories and tools 

There are other sources and platforms of information than reports from grantees that are essential to ECW grant making and management processes. The consultant is expected to clarify and organize those sources and platforms; and integrate/relate them with the main grants database according to the needs of ECW Secretariat staff members.

Deliverables:

• Incorporate external humanitarian risk data (e.g., INFORM index) into the risk management databases, to interlink the datasets and make the data available in analytical and visual tools.
• Build a secure case management database to capture and track sensitive case management data related to ECW grantee safeguarding, fraud, corruption and terrorism notifications.
• Development of financial planning module to track the MYRP, FER and AF planned investments.
• Integration of the contribution management tool whereby all inflows and outflows are tracked at the transaction level.
• Coordinate across the units to assess their respective needs and orient on the use of the tools such as MS SharePoint and MS Teams.
• Support ECW in sharing information from the system to the ECW Webpage as necessary.

Documentation & Capacity development:

Deliverables:

• A full documentation of the systems needs to be provided, including descriptions of where data is stored, how it is accessed and changed,
• Organize training/workshop sessions and develop guides and flow-charts on the Information Management System and roles and responsibilities within ECW teams.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• A minimum of five years of entry-level professional experience in data management, programme management and archiving in the non-governmental or private sector.  

• A university degree (Bachelor’s Level) in Business Administration, Information Management, Library Science or another related social science field is required.

• Prior experience in the grant-making sector such as foundations and philanthropies is desirable.

• Profound knowledge and highly skilled experience in Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft List, Microsoft Access and Microsoft Forms in addition to Microsoft Word and Excel as well as Adobe Acrobat. Knowledge and experience in other data entry/database, spreadsheet applications such as JotForm is a plus.

• Fluency in English (written & verbal) is required. Knowledge of an additional UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish), particularly French, is desirable.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA) and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results.

Functional Competencies

• Formulating Strategies and Concepts
• Analyzing
• Relating and Networking
• Persuading and Influencing
• Entrepreneurial Thinking

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Click here to learn more about UNICEF’s values and competencies.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages all candidates, irrespective of gender, nationality, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of the organization.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

UNICEF is committed to promote the protection and safeguarding of all children.

This position is not considered an elevated risk role. However, UNICEF reserves the right to conduct further vetting/ assessment within the scope of child safeguarding as appropriate.

Remarks:

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures, and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

If selected for this consultancy, the resulting appointment will be limited to ECW, a UNICEF hosted fund.