ACS/ Consultant to Support Implementations of Digital Censuses in Africa

Result of Service The consultant/contractor will provide the following services to support the design, testing and implementation of digital census services to support target countries in conducting a successful and efficient census. This will include:

Provisioning of tablets:

• Support with the development of a provisioning plan, including estimating resources, developing a timeline and standard operating procedures to ensure provisioning is completed on time and to sufficient quality;
• Supporting target countries with the design and implementation of infrastructure to support the provisioning;
• Reconfigure and test, provision tablets for target countries
• Train the country census technical team in the implementation of the provisioning applications.
• Live troubleshooting technical issues during the provisioning process.

Development and use of the operational dashboard

• Complete the development and testing of the ECA dashboard, ensuring that the indicators, graphical representation and design meet countries requirements for planned use in their 2021 Census.
• Support country census technical team in implementing live dashboards for live use in their pilot and actual Census.
• Train technical staff in configuration, troubleshooting and use of the dashboard.

ICT readiness assessment

- Undertake surveys of hardware, software, human resources and capability required for the 2020 round of housing and population censuses taking in selected countries

o System security assessment o Testing plan for volume and penetration o Data transfer and flow between systems o Review planned IT resources and capability o Disaster recovery plans o Data storage capacity and configuration - Outcome: Key recommendations and gaps in ICT infrastructure and capability for census-taking

Data analytics and related activities

• Develop dynamic components to analyze and disseminate census data for the production of insightful reports
• Develop Census e-questions repository to enable standard census questions and questionnaires to be re-used with a particular focus on e-questions and supporting routing, guidance, validation and editing processes

• Organizing at least three workshops for data processing experts and demographers from countries on digital census tools. The first workshops will be to discuss on census questionnaires and developing standardize questions pool. The two will focus on the ACS technical assistance on tablet provisioning and dashboard.

  Work Location Addis Ababa

  Expected duration The consultant will be expected to work for a period of six months from the date of the signature of the contract.

  Duties and Responsibilities Background

Population and housing censuses provide essential information for monitoring the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063 on a wide range of statistical areas related to population and housing, allowing disaggregation by small geographic areas and small population groups. As population and housing censuses are a fundamental source for producing small area statistics, timely dissemination of good quality census data is crucial for monitoring the SDG indicators.

Censuses are complex and costly statistical operations due to the involvement of a huge number of field workers, requiring a long time for preparation, post-enumeration activities and partnership with national and international stakeholders.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) assists African countries in conducting the 2020 Population and Housing Census. Several African countries have scheduled their first digital Census in 2021. The digital Census aims at improving the efficiency and accuracy of data collection through a CAPI (Computer Assisted Personal Interview) approach. This requires an integrated IT strategy that will support the rollout of huge numbers of tablets to field staff depending on the size of countries; the subsequent secure electronic transfer of data daily from the field during operations; data processing and analysis activities to enable the timely publication of results.

Under the direct supervision of the Chief of section in the African Centre for Statistics (ACS), the consultant will work primarily with Togo, Seychelles, Tanzania and other selected French speaking countries. In addition, the consultant will:

• Undertake ECA activities in the technical support census supports for African countries.
• Develop and follow up data science activities.
• Provision of census tablets for the 2020 round of population and housing censuses
• Implement and maintain operational census field monitoring dashboard for target countries
• Develop data analytics component for rapid analytical census reports

• Progress report on the conduct of digital census work in Africa

  Qualifications/special skills Academic Qualifications: Advanced university degree in Statistics, data science, information systems, or a related field is required.A first level university degree in a combination of additional two years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the master’s degree. Experience: A minimum of 5 years of experience in developing data processing and electronic information management products is required. Language: English and French are the working languages of United Nations Secretariat. For this consultancy, fluency in English or French is required.

  No Fee THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CHARGE A FEE AT ANY STAGE OF THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS (APPLICATION, INTERVIEW MEETING, PROCESSING, OR TRAINING). THE UNITED NATIONS DOES NOT CONCERN ITSELF WITH INFORMATION ON APPLICANTS’ BANK ACCOUNTS.