Consultancy - DPG Technical Specialist, Remote, Office of Innovation, Duration 11.5 months

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UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

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SE Home-based; Stockholm (Sweden)

Application deadline 1 year ago: Thursday 25 Aug 2022 at 21:55 UTC

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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.

Our team We're an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies and practices. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, by:

  • Looking at the 2-5 year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children;
  • Investing in early stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 0-2 year future including the Venture Fund that invests in open source technology solutions from start-ups based in UNICEF’s programme countries;
  • Identifying proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.”

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 is currently one of the hosting organizations for 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/

Your main responsibilities will be:

The DPGA Secretariat 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, providing technical assistance and supporting Venture Fund nominees.

Main Responsibilities will be:

  • Conducting technical assessment of DPG nominees:
    • Assessments within stipulated deadlines and timestamping of the DPG technical review process
    • Detailed documentation and audit trail maintenance for technical reviews that are 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
    • Act as the focal point for coordination of the technical assessment with other technical reviewers
    • Maintaining digital assets related to the review process on GitHub
    • Conduct annual re-reviews of DPG solutions
    • 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
  • Work with the technical team that maintains DPGA web architecture and ensure low latency, bugs and optimized performance for DPGA web assets like website, API, Github Org.
  • Assist the Product Manager in training DPGA members on the requisites of nominating their products to become DPGs
  • Participate in the DPGA standards council - sharing insights and making suggests for how to continue to improve the standard, application process, resources, the questionnaire and hints to improve the experience for DPG nominees
  • Host the DPG Reviewer checkin with a regular cadence to build consensus between technical experts, product resources and reviewers involved in the process
  • Support Communities of Practice by providing technical reviews of products to be highlighted in DPG reports
  • Under the guidance of the Venture Fund Technical Lead, provide technical assessment related support to Venture fund projects becoming DPGs.

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

  • An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or in other relevant areas.
  • A minimum of three (3) years of progressively responsible professional work experience in relevant field. A minimum of five (5) years of work 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, documentation and community management.
  • Experience in delivering guidance, technical support and mentorship to individuals, teams, start-ups or other groups on complex challenges is an asset.
  • Experience in product management including relevant systems and tools and development of product roadmaps
  • Experience with professional software engineering practices and best practices for the full software development life cycle.
  • Exposure to a variety of languages, frameworks, toolchains (e.g. JavaScript, Node JS, React JS, Python, Django, Ruby on Rails, AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Azure, etc.)
  • Experience with agile software development methodologies like scrum, rapid prototyping and evaluation of user feedback.
  • 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.
  • Ability to synthesize technical information and translate it into accessible products and systems.
  • Knowledge of international development and key challenges affecting children in developing countries is desired.
  • Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another UN language is an asset.

Payment details and further considerations

  • Monthly payment, based on monthly 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

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, and Accountability (CRITA). To view our competency framework, please visit here.

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 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.

Added 1 year ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: unicef.org