Consultancy - Innovation Monitoring and Evidence, Stockholm, Sweden or Home-based with frequent travel to Sweden, Office of Innovation, 11.5 months

Contract

This is a Consultancy contract. More about Consultancy contracts.

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.

Matching Today’s Challenges with Tomorrow’s Solutions ensures that all investments we make in innovation fit with our global aim of ensuring that every child can survive, thrive and live and learn in a safe, inclusive space, and that innovation is applied to the most pressing problems faced by some of the most vulnerable children and young people. In line with the Global Innovation Strategy, UNICEF’s innovation portfolio management approach aligns technical and financial resources to promising projects from across the organization that can accelerate results for children.

Through the development of UNICEF’s Global Innovation Strategy, nine portfolio focus areas were identified: learning, water and sanitation, maternal and newborn health, immunization, climate change, gender equality, humanitarian, youth, and mental health and psychosocial support. Through a problem-driven approach guided by the respective UNICEF Programme Groups (PG), each portfolio is committed to supporting the identification, development and scale-up of country-level innovative solutions, to meet the demands and priorities in line with UNICEF’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025, and ultimately the attainment of related SDGs.

Each portfolio contains solutions that use new approaches, tools and technology that address key problems UNICEF is trying to solve for and with children and young people, and that have potential to scale and significantly accelerate results. Innovation solutions within the portfolios are selected based on their potential to accelerate results for children across multiple countries and regions. There can be one or more different categories (or types) of innovation in a portfolio, including digital innovation, social innovation, data innovation, physical products, innovative finance and frugal innovation.

How can you make a difference?

This role will be primarily responsible for reviewing OOI and its Portfolio, Culture and Scale (PCS) team’s performance management framework and systems (responsibility #1 below). This role also supports various evidence-related tasks under the guidance and direction of the Innovation Manager (Evidence, Performance, and Programme Management), and in close collaboration with relevant innovation Hub leads and Portfolio Managers.

Main responsibilities will be: 1. Strengthening results-based management in portfolio management

• Review OOI performance management plan and develop/adjust Hub and Portfolio KPIs and monitoring modalities
• Strengthen result chains of each portfolio linking all solutions with portfolio problem statements, portfolio/Hub-level KPIs, Office Management Plan (OMP) KPIs, Strategic Plan (SP) indicators, and the SDGs
• Undertake monitoring, corrective actions and reporting for all Portfolio-related KPIs, SP & OMP KPIs on a regular basis
• Support reviewing portfolio problem statements as needed
• Review reporting templates and data flows to ensure timely and efficient reporting and data compilation
• Liaise with INVENT manager to visualize results in the performance portal

2. Generating evidence for acceleration and scale-up: strategic and technical guidance HQ and field innovation initiatives to ensure evidence elements are sufficiently integrated in innovation solutions

• Develop detailed guidance on innovation-appropriate indirect and direct beneficiary counting
• Support developing and implementing Monitoring, evaluation and evidence strategy, plan and its implementation for the Office of Innovation
• Create or identify externally and adapt, pilot and scale innovative approaches to building evidence around innovations that support organizational learning and scaling of innovations
• Develop learning, capacity building resources, and access to technical assistance to build awareness, competency in and diffusion of these approaches to support evidence generation implementation across the organization’s innovation work.
• Develop mechanisms to support offices to apply these evidence methodologies appropriately, such as decision support to identify the appropriate methodologies, developing/leveraging LTAs or rosters of practitioners, TORs, technical assistance to office to support implementation
• Where required and in collaboration with portfolio managers, provide direct technical assistance to key innovation projects around evidence building strategies
• Provide technical support to portfolio managers in any evidence activities they manage – e.g. reviewing the methodology section of ToRs, advising on innovation‐appropriate approaches
• Support monitoring, learning and evidence generation for donor, key partner and funding reporting
• Provide thought leadership around measurement of innovation and support any ongoing project developing guidance on innovation measurement

3. Generating evidence for acceleration and scale-up: direct delivery by OOI

• Aggregate, track and accompany the various Monitoring, evaluation, and evidence generation activities being undertaken across the Hubs, Portfolios and OOI Teams and the capture and communication of insights derived from individual activities and across the aggregate activities
• Support finalizing all commissioned reviews, case studies, toolkits, analysis and assessments together with portfolio managers
• Develop a work practice and plan that regularly shares internally and externally what we are trying, learning, insights, working out loud.
• Design and deliver events, thought leadership and learning opportunities, in collaboration with the capacity building/knowledge management lead and in coordination with OOI Communication Team

4. Generate learning for the portfolio approach

• Support commissioning and carrying out a review exercise to reflect and document learning with regards to the portfolio approach

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

• An advanced university degree (Master’s or higher) in Social Sciences or Humanities, Innovation-related field, International Relations, Business Administration, or another related technical field. *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 8 years of relevant professional experience in relevant professional experience is required at national and international levels in the areas of performance management, monitoring and evaluation, innovation and/or social and economic development and cooperation
• Demonstrated experience with performance management, KPI development, results-based management, logic model, theories of change, review/evaluation management is critical
• Professional work experience in monitoring and evaluation activities, especially with a focus on measurement of innovations/innovation programmes, expertise in approaches such as Social Impact Assessment, LEAN impact, Adaptive learning models, Social blueprint/model canvas, is an asset.
• Demonstrated expertise in innovation practice, spanning start-up to scaling innovations, especially in the social and/or development sectors.
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergency is considered 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.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

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

The UNICEF competencies required for this post are...

• Nurtures, Leads and Manages People (2)
• Demonstrates Self Awareness and Ethical Awareness (2)
• Works Collaboratively with others (2)
• Builds and Maintains Partnerships (2)
• Innovates and Embraces Change (2)
• Thinks and Acts Strategically (2)
• Drive to achieve impactful results (2)
• Manages ambiguity and complexity (2)

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

Payment details and further considerations

• This contract is based in Stockholm, Sweden or home-based with regular travel to Stockholm, Sweden
• 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
• UNICEF is responsible for travel to duty station and back home after assignment

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.