Programme and Data Analyst

Background
  Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core principles at UNDP:  we value diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate, we foster inclusion as a way of ensuring all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, and we ensure equity and fairness in all our actions. Taking a ‘leave no one behind’ approach to our diversity efforts means increasing representation of underserved populations. People who identify as belonging to marginalized or excluded populations are strongly encouraged to apply. Learn more about working at UNDP including our values and inspiring stories.
  UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.
 

Office/Unit/Project Description 

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels offers a spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in its Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in UNDP’s Strategic Plan. 

Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan. BPPS staff provide technical advice to Country Offices, advocates for UNDP corporate messages, represent UNDP at multi-stakeholder fora including public-private, government and civil society dialogues, and engage in UN inter-agency coordination in specific thematic areas. 

UNDP's 2022-2025 Strategic Plan highlighting our continued commitment to eradicating poverty, accompanying countries in their pathways towards the SDGs and working towards the Paris Agreement. As part of the Global Policy Network in the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support, UNDP's Nature, Climate Change, Energy, and Waste (NCE&W) Hubs promote and scale up integrated whole-of-governance approaches and nature-based solutions that reduce poverty and inequalities, strengthen livelihoods and inclusive growth, mitigate conflict, forced migration and displacement, and promote more resilient governance systems that advance linked peace and security agendas.

UNDP’s Strategic Plan has embedded our collective UN-Energy ambitious target to contributing to delivering energy access to 500 million more people by 2025 in partnership with others and accelerate a just energy transition with a new type of development policy in mind. UNDP supports countries to realize a just energy transition where the benefits of the transition are distributed evenly across people and society, and the potential negative impacts of the transition are minimized for the poorest and most vulnerable communities. UNDP’s focus is to make the transition more just by assessing the distributional social-economic impacts of energy transition (and access) policies, how to avoid exacerbating existing inequalities and minimize the impact on poor and vulnerable sections of the population that are disproportionately affected.

UNDP through its Sustainable Energy Hub (SEH) is designed to respond to these challenges and to harness networks, experience, and innovation. UNDP will focus on three pillars to guide its “Sustainable Energy for Development” pathway:

1. Close the gap on energy access so that marginalized people and communities gain access to sustainable, clean, energy and the dignity and opportunities it brings.
2. Accelerate the energy transition through system-changes that support a green recovery and improves the efficiency by bringing together the best ideas from the worlds of government, business, finance, digital, and most importantly from people, communities, and civil societies. 
3. Increase energy resilience in crisis and fragile contexts to communities affected by conflict and crises to help them meet basic needs in the short-term and build back better in the long-term.

The Sustainable Energy Hub is a platform to bring together and catalyze UNDP’s work on energy for development. The Hub is a network of partners that work alongside countries to transform energy systems through an integrated agenda focused on the policy, technology and financial shifts that shape sustainable economic development. It helps countries build a net-zero society that puts people first and is driven by a just, sustainable energy transition that leaves no one behind.

The Sustainable Energy Hub focuses on five integrated lines of service, each of them offering viable entry points for additional partners to engage in these efforts. One of these lines of service is ‘Data Analytics and Digital and Exponential Technologies’. This workstream aims to orient our programming to be more innovative through new digital and innovative tools that can enhance project planning, preparation and results tracking, as well as implement the digital principles in the UNDP Digital Strategy 2022-2025 to catalyze inclusion and safeguards in a systemic approach to digital, data, and innovation in the context of sustainable energy. 

Scope of Work 

Under the supervision of the Director of the Sustainable Energy Hub, the Analyst will be responsible for the following activities under the SEH current initiatives:

Thought Leadership

• Coordinate the development of several knowledge products include papers on AI in energy, Hydrogen for Development, Debt and Energy, Sustainable Transport, and other thought leadership;
• Contribute to the drafting of the Sustainable Energy Hub bulletin including standard editions and Several special edition bulletins aligned with key thematics. Each bulletin also is accompanied by a social media campaign of videos and written content, which the consultant will be coordinating and reviewing;
• Facilitate regional strategies editing and design to develop published reports and media content for each of the five UNDP regional bureaus and SIDS
• Develop strategic documents on how to leverage digital technologies and innovation to inform and leverage UNDP’s policy and programming support - including opportunities to utilise digital, data, technology, and high-tech and low-cost innovation in the context of sustainable energy.

Energy Youth Program

• Facilitate the design and launch of a youth program supporting global youth through capacity-building, research at regional, 
• Coordinate a youth needs assessment and a report developed to analyze gaps and opportuinties to support youth in their professional, academic, and entrepreneurial goals in the just energy transition
• Lead a pilot of the Sustainable Energy Academy with the network involved in the youth program, and support youth leading trainings in their communities and universities
• Energy AI
• Lead project management for the Energy AI tool including developing workplans, system architectures, design, concept notes, and coordinating deliverables;
• Coordinate updates to the AI model through the development of an LLM fine-tuned on UNDP data and energy reports, and integrated data processing modules for the synthesis AI approach;
• Support cuation of database and development of data pipeline for ingesting and cleaning documents to create vectorized text database; 
• Sustainable Energy Academy (SEA)
• Contribute to the development and review process for the 12 the modules of the SEA through developing workplans, reviewing module outlines and drafts;
• Lead the project management for the visual studio working on production and mastering of the video content for the SEA course;
• Launch pilots of the SEA with country offices and regional partners, including a first phase with the first 4 modules and a later phase with the full set of 12 modules.

Data Science

• Lead the development of the web tools for access and visualization of energy data and documents for the Sustainable Energy Knowledge Platform (SEKP);
• Provide data analytic support for the development of energy reporting and regional strategic documents;
• Facilitate the development of an analysis of entry points for using UNDP and IBM geospatial products to advance national and regional energy modeling tools
• Refine the data and analytics on the Energy Moonshot Tracker with detailed disaggregated outputs on the UNDP portfolio of energy-related project

Communications and Social Media

• Conduct data analytics to support the SEH narrative and analyze progress towards energy targets;
• Facilitate the communications effort of the SEH through drafting, copyediting, and graphic design;
• Provide ad-hoc strategic communications support to the Director of the Sustainable Energy Hub.
• The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.

Institutional Arrangement

• The Analyst will work from his/her home base;
• The Analyst will report to, and be directly supervised by, the Director of the Sustainable Energy Hub;
• The Analyst will be given access to relevant information necessary for the execution of the tasks under this assignment;
• The Analyst will be responsible for providing her/his own work station (i.e. laptop, internet, phone, scanner/printer, etc.) and must have access to reliable internet connection;
• Given the global consultations to be undertaken during this assignment, the Analystis expected to be reasonably flexible with his/her availability for such consultations taking into consideration different time zones.

Competencies

Core

Achieve Results: LEVEL 1: Plans and monitors own work, pays attention to details, delivers quality work by deadline Think Innovatively: LEVEL 1: Open to creative ideas/known risks, is pragmatic problem solver, makes improvements  Learn Continuously: LEVEL 1: Open minded and curious, shares knowledge, learns from mistakes, asks for feedback Adapt with Agility: LEVEL 1: Adapts to change, constructively handles ambiguity/uncertainty, is flexible  Act with Determination:  LEVEL 1: Shows drive and motivation, able to deliver calmly in face of adversity, confident Engage and Partner: LEVEL 1: Demonstrates compassion/understanding towards others, forms positive relationships Enable Diversity and Inclusion: LEVEL 1: Appreciate/respect differences, aware of unconscious bias, confront discrimination 

 

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

Thematic Area Name Definition Business Development Knowledge Generation Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need. Business Management Working with Evidence and Data Ability to inspect, cleanse, transform and model data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions and supporting decision-making. Digital & Innovation Data Analysis

Ability to extract, analyse and visualize data (including

Real-Time Data) to form meaningful insights and aid effective decision making.

Information Management & 

Technology

Data Collection Being skilled in Data Sorting, Data Cleaning, Survey Administration, Presentation and Reporting including collection of Real-Time Data (e.g. mobile data, satellite data, sensor data).

Information Management & 

Technology

Data Management and Analytics Knowledge in data management, data sciences, ability to structure data, develop dashboard and visualization. Design data warehouses, data lakes or data platforms concepts. Familiarity with Machine leaning, natural language processing or generation and the use of artificial intelligence to support predictive analytics. CDMP or TOGAF9 or equivalent certification desirable. Business management Communication

Ability to communicate in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner both through written and verbal communication; to tailor messages and choose communication methods depending on the audience.

 

Ability to manage communications internally and externally, through media, social media and other appropriate channels.

Business Direction and Strategy System Thinking  Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system

 

Qualifications

Min. Education requirements   

• Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent)  in International Relations/Affairs, International Development, Innovation, Data Science, Economics, Political Science or related fields. or
• A first-level university degree (bachelor’s degree) in the areas mentioned above, in combination with an additional two years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree 

Min. years of relevant work experience 

• Minimum of 2 years (with masters degree) or 4 years (with bachelors degree)  of experience in international development, data science or related fields.

Required skills 

• Relevant project management experience leading development teams for online data platforms;
• Experience in innovative use of technology for development, particularly in the area of sustainable energy;
• Practical knowledge/experience in one or more of these fields (Javascript, D3, HTML, CSS, Python, and experience in PostgreSQL, PostGIS, Azure);
• Experience in implementing machine learning architectures;
• Design experience in user interface design and human-computer interaction; Adobe Creative Suite
• Experience in working with cloud computing services and server-side architectures;
• Experience with GIS software such as QGIS, or ArcGIS, or ESRI;
• Experience in conducting data science research in international development or related field;
• Experience in communications and social media skills to translate technical concepts for decision-makers. 

Desired skills in addition to the competences covered in the Competencies section  

• Prior work experience at, or familiarity with, the work of UNDP and/or other UN agencies;
• Experience and knowledge of latest international development issues in UNDP’s areas of work (e.g., poverty reduction, democratic governance, human rights, environment and natural resources management, climate change, blue economy disaster risk reduction and resilience, gender equality and women’s empowerment);
• Copy-editing experience.

Required Language(s)   

•            Fluent in written and spoken English is required.

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  UNDP has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and misconduct, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.  
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