E T Consultant

Contract

This is a World Bank Group grade: EC1 contract. More about World Bank Group grade: EC1 contracts.

E T Consultant

Description

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges. Visit www.worldbank.org.

A department of the World Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency, DIME's purpose is to increase the use of impact evaluation (IE) in the design and implementation of public policy and to develop institutional capacity and motivation for evidence-based policy.

DIME’s work focuses on:

• Evaluating programs at scale to answer policy-relevant questions;

• Developing innovative data systems and data analytics tools for real-time decisions;

• Using causal inference analysis to identify mechanisms to improve results;

• Building capacity to strengthen country institutions for evidence-based policymaking.

DIME aims to overcome the challenge to identify true cause-and-effect relations in policy programs. By linking researchers to policymakers and feeding results back into policies, DIME fosters systematic use of evidence, which informs adoption, mid-course corrections, and scale-up of policies. Through workshops and clinics with operational staff and government clients, joint research teams, active field coordination, as well as research products such as seminars, papers, and policy briefs, DIME builds capacity while forming a wider community of practice.

DIME accompanies impact evaluations during their entire life-cycle. It starts with assessing demand, identifying research questions, as well as supporting project implementation, high quality data collection, analysis, and dissemination of results.

With a portfolio of more than 220 impact evaluations, DIME operates across all sectors in about 60 countries spanning the globe. The IEs test a variety of interventions and mechanisms to understand why policy succeeds or fails and how to improve policy design and implementation to obtain better results. By working proactively in collaboration with clients, DIME employs experimental methods to infer causality whenever possible (79% of the portfolio). 17% of DIME IEs utilize non-experimental methods, while 4% use a combination of the two.

DIME is structured into 4 World Bank units:

- DIME 1 “Economic Growth and Structural Transformation”

- DIME 2 “Gender, Economic Opportunity, and Fragility”

- DIME 3 “Governance and Institution Building”

- DIME 4 “Infrastructure and Climate Change”

The Governance Research team at DIME seeks Research Analysts to manage and assist activities related to various research projects on civil service, public procurement and taxation.

Work on civil service and public sector personnel fits into a broader research program called The Bureaucracy Lab, which is an initiative co-led by DIME and the Governance Global Practice. The Lab is creating improved administrative data on the characteristics of public officials and their organizations to inform the operational design of public-sector organizations. In addition, the Lab is undertaking experimental work with large-scale surveys of civil servants to generate an evidence base on how to survey civil servants effectively.

The Public Procurement research team uses high frequency administrative data and primary data collection to assess the efficiency of the public procurement system in many different country contexts. The team also engages with governments in designing and establishing procurement data monitoring systems and building capacity on statistical analysis.

The Taxation team works closely with tax authorities across the world to generate policy-relevant and rigorous research on tax policy and tax administration. The team’s activities also include providing training to tax authorities on data analytics and modern impact evaluation tools.

The Analyst will work closely with DIME Economists, Research Officers, Analysts, Impact Evaluation Field Coordinators and Research Assistants on the team to produce high quality data and analysis. We seek candidates with

• Substantial experience working on and coordinating research projects. He/She/They will need to demonstrate solid experience working with a large research team, preferably in a developing country context and with interface with government counterparts;

• Strong technical skills in design and analysis of prospective impact evaluation and micro-econometrics are required;

• Interest and ability to explain and communicate research and data findings and methodologies to project counterparts in an organized and systematic way.

The analyst will work alongside the team’s principal investigators and will coordinate the broader research team and contribute to the engagement with external stakeholders and partners. S/he/they will work on several key areas including but not limited to:

Project Coordination:

• Ensure good communication and coordination among members of the Impact Evaluation, Government, and Bank project teams;

• Develop relationships with the relevant partners (including government officials) and understand their operational questions and capacity needs to implement research and data analytics projects;

• Assist in drafting and writing presentations, analytical reports and research and policy briefs

• Assist in the supervision of Research Assistants supporting the portfolio, and mentor them closely on interaction with the government, data collection, monitoring of implementation, preparation of detailed work plans;

• Participate in official missions and deliver capacity building and training activities for clients.

• Identify research opportunities and contribute to funding proposals.

• Organize workshops with development partners to build capacity and disseminate results.

Data and Research:

• Work with the research team to design a plan for data analysis, supervise the research assistants and field coordinators in implementing it and carry out specific coding tasks to perform this analysis. Common analytical tasks include production of descriptive statistics and regression analysis for various outputs such as briefs, presentations and academic papers.

• Participate in internal statistical code review as a quality assurance mechanism and capacity-building exercise.

• Contribute to the preparation of research papers including formatting and creating tables, graphs, and related analysis. Draft and provide inputs to dissemination products, including briefs, blogs, presentations, policy reports, and press releases.

• Generate data analytics reports and dashboard from procurement micro data.

Selection Criteria

The successful candidates will have:

• A Master’s degree in economics, public policy, statistics, or related field and at least 2 years of relevant experience in quantitative research, analytical work or supervision of governance-related projects.

• Demonstrated ability to work across projects and different team compositions is key.

• Demonstrated experience supervising junior team members and communicating with stakeholders is required.

• Since most of DIME’s analysis is conducted in Stata or R, experience with at least one of these packages is a requirement for this role.

• Technical expertise in impact evaluation (design and implementation) is highly desirable.

• Experience analyzing administrative data in developing countries is highly desirable.

• Experience with civil service, public procurement and/or taxation projects is desirable.

• Experience working or interfacing with World Bank operations teams is desirable.

• Experience with data collection, relational databases and dashboard creation are a plus.

World Bank Group Core Competencies

We are proud to be an equal opportunity and inclusive employer with a dedicated and committed workforce, and do not discriminate based on gender, gender identity, religion, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or disability.

Learn more about working at the World Bank and IFC, including our values and inspiring stories.

Note: The selected candidate will be offered a one-year appointment, renewable for an additional one year, at the discretion of the World Bank Group, and subject to a lifetime maximum ET Appointment of two years. If an ET appointment ends before a full year, it is considered as a full year toward the lifetime maximum. Former and current ET staff who have completed all or any portion of their second-year ET appointment are not eligible for future ET appointments.