Regional Measurement Advisor - Asia

Overview

Lead delivery of the IRC’s MEAL strategy in Asia, support initiatives and build MEAL teams.

You have:

• Advanced degree in relevant field such as economics, statistics, international development, public policy, or other social sciences, or relevant work experience
• Minimum seven years of progressing experience designing, implementing, and supporting MEAL frameworks and results including supporting field-based MEAL design and reporting, as well as working with major international donors on MEAL related aspects
• Experience with the challenges of effective monitoring in the field, including cultural, gender, and access considerations with the aim of enhancing project learning, quality, and data-driven decision making
• Fluent in English and a preference for someone who speaks one or more of the Asian languages - Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Bangla, Burmese or Thai
• Strong computer skills, especially MS Excel, Power BI (or similar) and CommCare (or similar)
• Experience rolling out organizational initiatives, particularly related to monitoring and evaluation

Job Description

Regional Measurement Advisors (RMAs) are responsible for informing the long-term direction of Measurement at the IRC and supporting the alignment and success of Country, Regional and Global measurement initiatives – keeping country programs and IRC's clients at the center of our work. Positioned in the IRC regional teams, RMAs perform a critical role in defining and driving critical strategic opportunities and needs, alongside building and growing strong MEAL teams to support the delivery of MEAL technical excellence.

The Regional Measurement Advisor leads delivery of the IRC’s MEAL strategy in Asia, working hand-in-hand with Technical Unit colleagues and program leadership. The CRRD MEAL strategy sets an IRC wide vision to increase the scale and deepen the impact of IRC’s programming. The strategy has 5 priorities:

1. Deepen our understanding of IRC’s clients, programs, scale, and outcomes.

Driving better efficiency, effectiveness, and adaptation in our programs.

2. Promote and support increased data use to design and deliver higher quality programs

Looking at “learning” as an outcome of those processes instead of a standalone activity, making content easier to derive action from, supporting triangulation and storytelling that couples quality data with frontline tacit knowledge.

3. Expand and integrate existing data systems

Helping country programs and projects stand-up MEAL systems faster and deliver better quality program data.

4. Strengthen capacity to deliver rigorous MEAL

Diagnosing the health of our MEAL systems and the quality of our data and information flows to inform help strengthen and leverage our MEAL foundations.

5. Uptake and use of MEAL products and resources

Understanding the specific needs of teams and offering technical support and upskilling and encouraging teams to become spokespeople for successful tools, resources, systems, and data use.

This role leads Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning for the Asia team. Reporting to the Deputy Regional Director with a technical report (management in partnership) to the Director Regional Measurement Team, and covering countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Thailand. The role line manages the Regional MEAL Technology Coordinator and works in close collaboration with Technical Unit MEAL staff.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide technical oversight and coordination of MEAL delivery and quality assurance in the region.

• Oversee activities to ensure continuous improvement in data quality.

• Support IRC’s country leadership and regional teams in their efforts to use measurement data for decision making.

• Providing support in the review of strategic proposals, with a focus on ensuring sound log frame, targets, MEAL plan and budget. Ensuring use of the consistent standard indicators within and across countries in the region, leading to meaningful aggregations and potential benchmarking opportunities.

• Lead MEAL planning on multi-country proposals and other large/complex proposals, as designated by the Deputy Regional Director.

• Providing support for routine and ad-hoc measurement activities throughout the program cycle in accordance with the relevant IRC MEAL Handbook and Project Cycle Meeting guidelines.

• Supporting countries with delivery of complex MEAL products where needed, such as assessment, baseline, midline and endline surveys, evaluations, and learning activities.

• Support in-country DDPs (Deputy Director of Programmes) and senior measurement and learning staff in the hiring, onboarding and continuous mentoring, capacity building and professional development of measurement staff; as well as advising Country Office on recommended staff structure, software and hardware for effective measurement.

• Coordinate the MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning) of multi-country programs in the region, ensuring consistency of approach is used that enables cross-cutting consolidation, analysis, learning and reporting to all stakeholders involved.

• Support the success of IRC Country, Regional and Global measurement initiatives; foster collaboration with country program teams, and channel the countries’ perspectives to the Measurement Unit.

• Support the establishment of Client Responsiveness (CR) systems, including client need assessment, baseline, satisfaction surveys and the collection and use of routine feedback data in Countries together with technical advisors.

• Ensure the roll-out of Program Data Toolkits and the Program Indicator Dashboards in the region and country programs, providing oversight to the Regional Technology Coordinator and working closely with Regional Technical Leads.

• Provide data insights and analysis for use in the regional learning agenda and regional decision making.

Provide leadership at regional and global level; actively contribute to the development of a sound measurement strategy; and ensure alignment of Measurement goals and priorities at country, regional and HQ levels;

• Contribute to the development of Measurement Unit strategic plans.

• In collaboration with peer RMAs, foster MEAL excellence within and across IRC regions, supporting the Measurement Community of Practice (CoP), and supporting staff development to identify and cultivate MEAL leaders at country, regional and global levels.

• Support the success of IRC Country, Regional and Global measurement initiatives; channel the countries experience, interests, aspirations and concerns to the Measurement Unit.

• Stay abreast of new measurement developments in and outside IRC; Partner with relevant technical units to assure products are fit for purpose and according to best practice standards for methods and use of data.

• Involve country programs in the delivery and iteration of existing MEAL technology products and innovation and development of new initiatives to help the IRC develop and maintain effective and relevant data collection and analysis tools.

Position reports to: Deputy Regional Director Asia

Technically report to: Director Regional Team, Measurement Unit

Position directly supervises: Regional MEAL Technology Coordinator, in partnership with the Data Product Management Lead.

Technically supervises: Country MEAL focal points

Other Internal and/or external contacts: Country Directors, Deputy Directors of Programs, other Regional Measurement Advisors and Technical Advisors, Measurement Unit, Regional Technical Leads, Awards Management Unit, Global Partnerships and Philanthropy, Research, Evaluation and Learning team.

Job Requirements:

Essential qualifications, skills and experience

• Advanced degree in relevant field such as economics, statistics, international development, public policy, or other social sciences, or relevant work experience

• Minimum seven years of progressing experience designing, implementing, and supporting MEAL frameworks and results including supporting field-based MEAL design and reporting, as well as working with major international donors on MEAL related aspects.

• Strength in developing baseline research, logic models, data collection and analysis of data sets, mid-term evaluations, outcome evaluations, and in mentoring and teaching-by-doing other MEAL staff.

• Experience with the challenges of effective monitoring in the field, including cultural, gender, and access considerations with the aim of enhancing project learning, quality, and data-driven decision making.

• Good understanding of basic ICT principles and the logic of data collection and management systems.

• Strong computer skills, especially MS Excel, Power BI (or similar) and CommCare (or similar). Knowledge of other software used in qualitative and quantitative MEAL would be solid assets.

• Excellent communication skills, including solid writing skills and the ability to plan for and prepare strategic communications.

• Fluent in English and a preference for someone who speaks one or more of the Asian languages - Dari, Pashto, Urdu, Bangla, Burmese or Thai.

Highly desirable

• Experience with direct program implementation in emergency and low-resource contexts.

• Experience rolling out organizational initiatives, particularly related to monitoring and evaluation

• Team player able to work with multi-cultural teams and under tight deadlines

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Qualifications

Potential interview questions