Consultancy - Digital Public Goods Technical Specialist, Office of Innovation, 12 months, REMOTE, REQ

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 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 Office of Innovation 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.

The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively.

How can you make a difference?

The UNICEF Innovation Fund has been specifically designed to finance early stage, open-source technology that can benefit children. The core motivation of the Innovation Fund is to identify "clusters" or portfolios of initiatives around emerging technology - so that UNICEF can both shape markets and also learn about and guide these technologies to benefit children. We invest in solutions that can impact the lives of the most vulnerable children. We find these solutions clustered around $100 billion industries in frontier technology spaces, such as: UAVs, virtual and augmented reality, artificial intelligence, nano-satellites, and human dynamics. With SD$35M (+ 2267 ETH + 8 BTC) raised to date, the Innovation Fund is scaling its investment portfolio with the aim of investing in 20 start-ups every year, and provides funding to CO-led projects. The current portfolio of companies consists of several cohorts developing and piloting solutions in virtual and augmented reality, data science and artificial intelligence, blockchain, UAVs, IoT, and in assistive technology.

The Office of Innovation currently hosts the Secretariat for the Digital Public Goods Alliance, established in follow-up to the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. In its report, the Panel recommends as 1B “that a broad, multi-stakeholder alliance, involving the UN, create a platform for sharing digital public goods, engaging talent and pooling data sets, in a manner that respects privacy, in areas related to attaining the SDGs”. Norway, Sierra Leone, UNICEF and iSPIRT, the four initial champions working to implement this recommendation. As part of facilitating use of digital public goods, the Alliance will help potential users identify and engage with relevant implementation support communities and will also link to relevant policy and regulatory resources. The Alliance also wants to help ensure future development and management of digital public goods, through identifying and developing funding models and business models. As part of the Alliance’s work on identifying and vetting potential digital public goods, and identifying and engaging with implementation support communities, the initial alliance partners have developed a technical assessment process. This process is documented on https://digitalpublicgoods.net/nominate/

The Office of Innovation is looking for a DPG Technical Specialist to focus on the sourcing and assessment of Digital Public Goods nominees, conducting the technical assessment, improving related criteria, and providing technical assistance.

Main Responsibilities will be: ● Complete technical assessment of DPG nominees, in order to complete these assessments the consultant will need to:

• Work within stipulated deadlines and timestamping of the DPG technical review process
• Provide detailed documentation and audit trail maintenance for each technical reviews that is conducted
• Clear, timely and succinct communication with the DPG applicants about the status of their application and clarifications
• Work with DPG applicants to communicate clearly and provide resources where solutions do not currently comply with the standard
• Follow up with DPG applicants in case they are unresponsive, provide feedback and suggestions on how to improve their documentation for the DPG application\
• Coordinate with other technical reviewers and experts involved in the review process
• Request discussions with expert reviewers for consensus building on applications that may require additional support or scrutiny
• Conduct renewal reviews of DPG solutions and assess compliance with any DPG Standard changes
• Conduct calls with DPG owners in case an escalation is needed for them to complete their documentation
• Identify and maintain priorities assigned by DPGA secretariat and DPGA members for review of applications

Description of assignment

No.****Tasks****End Product/Deliverables

Time Frame****Payment schedule1Complete technical assessment of 120 DPG nominees (10/month) and document outcomes transparentlyDocument the results of assessment of 10 DPGsMonth 15%Document the results of assessment of 30 DPGsMonth 410%Document the results of assessment of 20 DPGsMonth 610%Document the results of assessment of 20 DPGsMonth 810%Document the results of assessment of 20 DPGsMonth 1010%Document the results of assessment of 20 DPGsMonth 1210%2Collect feedback on the technical assessment process and deliver a report providing inputs for revisions of the assessment criteriaUpdate the DPG Reviewer guideMonth 310%Update the DPG submission guideMonth 510%Provide a document detailing gaps and challenges of assessment criteria to DPG Standards CouncilMonth 710%Provide a document proposing assessment criteria for DPIMonth 115%3Draft 2 technical reports outlining the assessment of DPGs for Communities of PracticeDraft technical reviews for GovStack Communities of Practice reportsMonth 25%Draft technical reviews for AI Communities of Practice reportsMonth 95%To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

• An advanced university degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Software Engineering or in other relevant areas. *A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with 3 additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 3 years of progressively responsible professional work experience in a relevant field. 5 years of experience in lieu of an advanced degree.
• Significant experience in developing and piloting open source technology products, ideally software, data, and content.
• Experience with open source community development and track record of engagement with relevant networks.
• Demonstrated expertise in required technical areas, including software quality assurance, open source license types, system architecture design, product documentation, community management and requirements engineering.
• Exposure to a variety of programming languages, application development frameworks, databases and toolchains (e.g. JavaScript, Node JS, React, Java, Python, R, Django, Ruby on Rails, Flutter, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, Git & Github, SQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Pandas, Scikit-learn, Tensorflow, Jupyter notebooks).
• Experience with professional software engineering principles and best practices for the end-to-end software development life cycle.
• Experience with agile software development methodologies like scrum, DevOps, rapid prototyping and evaluation of user feedback.
• Experience in delivering guidance, technical support and mentorship to individuals, teams, start-ups or other groups on complex challenges is an asset.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, excellent technical communication with peers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Understanding of different contexts and experience working in developing countries desired.
• Knowledge of international development and/ or technology development in the social sector is desired.
• 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

● Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant ● Interested applicant is requested to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee

Travel :

● Consultant will need to travel internationally two times during this contract:

o Members Meeting in Oslo, Norway November, 2023 – Requires 4 days of physical attendance

● The consultant is responsible to arrange his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance

Duty Station : Remote.

Duration: 12 months

Insurance:

UNICEF will not be responsible for costs arising from accidents and/or illness incurred during the consultant’s service. Therefore, the selected candidate must provide proof of enrollment in a health/accident plan prior to starting his/her work.

How to apply:

• Interested applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee. Please complete your profile in UNICEF's e-Recruitment system. • Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class), daily subsistence allowance (limited to UN official rates), and other estimated costs such as visa and travel/health insurance. Please indicate your ability, availability and financial proposal (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above. • Applications submitted without a financial proposal will not be considered.

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.