Consultancy - Development of Web-Based Global Dashboard: FunDoo, Home-based, Office of Innovation, 11.5 months (part-time)

Contract

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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, innovate

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

The Office of Innovation (OOI) is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the startup thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.

UNICEF's OOI creates opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs. We do this by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly -- anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant, and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach -- in a traditionally risk-averse field -- to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast and lasting results for children.

About funDoo

FunDoo: a UNICEF initiative in collaboration with YuWaah (GenU India) and Udhyam Learning Foundation, leverages the U-Report chat-based technology to deliver 21st century skills at scale, through real world tasks. The program is available on WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram and Facebook messenger along with other messaging applications accessible through U-Report.

The content on funDoo is byte sized and gamified, the tasks can be completed at home and follow the learning by doing principle. The tasks have short and simple actionable prompts for users, which are tangible and reportable.

Through FunDoo, UNICEF brings the following innovation to EdTech for young people:

1. A new way to look at 21st century skills learning: While most initiatives building 21st Century skills focus on a subset of specialized skills (such as communication skills, SEL, or financial skills alone etc.); with FunDoo, there is a wide focus on a cross section of these skills. The pedagogy and implementation approach are novel as FunDoo is an experiential learning platform.

2. Leveraging technology for education without deepening the digital divide: The platform design and delivery mechanism is such that a learner can use FunDoo even if they do not own their own device. All they need is access to a mobile device with WhatsApp (a device owned by someone in the family or extended circle).

Most of the learning that happens on FunDoo is off device. Since FunDoo is a chat-based learning solution, it is accessible even on low bandwidth. How Learning Happens on FunDoo 21st century skills cannot be learnt through books alone. ‘Doing’ is an essential part of building these skills. The platform’s pedagogy, therefore, derives from principles of experiential learning implemented through tasks.

FunDoo tasks are gamified interactions and challenge learners to do progressively complex tasks, while providing guidance & real-world nudges. To complete a task, the learner engages with the chatbot and carries out an activity in the real world, earning them U-points that they will be able to redeem later based on a social credit system along with giveaways, badges and learner boards to nudge users towards increased completion and engagement. The tasks have been tested and created via a consultative process, through FGDs with young people.

How can you make a difference?

UNICEF’s Office of Innovation is hiring a consultant to design, develop, host and maintain a web-based analytical tool/dashboard that facilitates monitoring of progress against time-bound outputs and indicators developed by country offices for funDoo globally.

Your main responsibilities will be:

Develop an automated global Dashboard for funDoo which allows for automatic updates of the data and data visualization in a global and country-wise manner.

Inception Phase: Finalize the user requirements, develop the wireframes, finalize indicators and data visualization for the dashboard.

• Key indicators for funDoo will include, but not limited to the following:
• Data on global, national, state levels.
• Demographic Data: Age, Gender, Language, Region
• Registration and Enrollment: No. Of new registrations, active users (Daily, weekly, monthly)
• User level data: no. Of tasks completed, certificates earned, U-Points earned etc
• Engagement: Starting a task, completing a task, task attempt pattern
• Date filters for all the above data: From, between, monthly, quarterly, etc.
• Calculation of NPS

Design and Development Phase:

• The consultant is to develop a dashboard for assessing the 21st century skilling of young people that would enable the program team to achieve the following:
• Gain quick access to information on status of funDoo indicators and user participation on funDoo for different countries (primarily through RapidPro open-source platform).
• Visualize key user engagement indicators on a dashboard.
• The dashboard shall enable users to obtain a global level aggregate value as well as drill down to specific countries and within them, states, and districts.
• The dashboard shall also enable us to determine the trend of key indicators.
• Spatial visualization of indicators at the global, national, state and district level. This would enable us to identify and highlight good performing areas as well as areas of concern at the country, state, and district level.
• The visualization should also enable comparison of datasets over a period at global, national, state and district level so that progress in a certain region can be mapped.
• Have an admin module to manage the dashboard, including but not limited to create/modify/delete access rights, reset / revoke passwords, modify / add indicators, modify input forms, upload bulk data, generate reports, etc.
• The system will enable activity audit logging so that super admin can track the activities of various users.
• Include a reporting feature in the system to enable generation of online reports for the following:
  • One-two page factsheets at the global/national/state level to depict basic information using a pre-defined set of indicators.
  • Quarterly reports at the global, national, state and district level using a pre-defined set of indicators. · Customized reports by selecting reporting periods and indicators.

Deployment Phase

• The consultant will setup and deploy cloud-based servers hosting the back-end architecture (web services and database etc.) to receive, store, sort, use, and archive data ensuring 99% uptime and complete data backup ensuring security features of data from multiple countries.
• The consultant will deploy servers/back-end infrastructure and technology platforms to manage the data coming in from various systems, uploaded by users and analytics created for the dashboard

Post-Deployment Phase

• Transfer of knowledge on use and customization of the application, server and database management of the deployed system, dashboard code and development and trouble shooting.
• Transfer knowledge on use of the monitoring dashboard for accessing and understanding reported data, updating program data.
• Use of monitoring dashboard for recording reviews at relevant intervals.
• Handover all original codes, all the product developed/generated during the project including documents.
• Provide complete support and troubleshooting for the deployed application, servers and dashboards to remove all bugs and ensure stability.
• This will continue till the end of the project period. Provide need based online/email/telephonic support to team members for day-to-day troubleshooting of the system. This will be continued till the end of November 2023

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in data visualization, analytics or related fields. *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 2 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 3 years of relevant professional experience in with a focus on helping organizations and groups understand the synergies between technology and data. Informing strategy and planning of intervention through insights from data.
• Proven experience in systems change research, analysis, and insight generation
• Strong understanding of creating digital platforms in low-bandwidth settings is a plus.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergencies is considered an asset.
• Experience in working with UN agencies, non-government organizations, and developmental organizations is an asset

• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

  Payment details and further considerations

• Monthly payment, based on tasks and progress reports, approved upon monthly review with supervisor.

• Consultant is responsible for his/her own health and travel insurance
• Consultant is eligible for standard DSA for all work-related travel

Duration of the assignment: up to 140 days with 11.5 months

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

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.

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.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.