Job Description
Evaluation Specialist (Multi-Country, Humanitarian), P4 – TA, post # 111609 (Temporary Appointment 364 Days)
| Job no: | 538891 |
| Contract type: | Temporary Appointment |
| Level: | P-4 |
| Location: | Sudan |
| Categories: | Monitoring and Evaluation |
| Advertised: | 17/03/2021 E.Africa Standard Time |
| Deadline: | 07/04/2021 E.Africa Standard Time |
UNICEF works in 190 countries and territories to protect the rights of every child. UNICEF has spent 70 years working to improve the lives of children and their families. Defending children’s rights throughout their lives requires a global presence, aiming to produce results and understand their effects. UNICEF believes all children have a right to survive, thrive and fulfill their potential – to the benefit of a better world.
For every child, hope
The Middle East and North Africa region covers countries and territories from Morocco to the Islamic Republic of Iran, including Djibouti and Sudan in sub-Saharan Africa.
The region is home to nearly 418 million people, including 157 million, or 38 per cent, who are under the age of 18.The Middle East and North Africa Regional Office is a hub for information, technical expertise, oversight and coordination for UNICEF Country Offices. It also supports these offices in their efforts to raise much-needed resources.
Specialist advisers based in Amman help develop programmes in health and nutrition, child protection, adolescent development, HIV and AIDS, education, water and sanitation, social policy and emergency preparedness.
How can you make a difference?
Under the supervision of the Regional Evaluation Advisor, The MC Evaluation Specialist works with the evaluation specialists/focal points in their duties in the assigned countries.
The MC Evaluation Specialist ensures credibility, impartiality, and independence of the evaluation function in the COs under her/his responsibility. He/she also facilitates the development and implementation of evaluation workplans in each Country Office and provides guidance and technical support to sectors and to the Country Management Team as well as the national government on evaluation and on related matters.
The MC Evaluation Specialist helps the Country Offices to manage its evaluation partnerships, including inter-agency relations within the UN, and collaboration with the Regional Office and Headquarters. The Specialist may also be assigned more specific duties that enable her/him to be a resource person across the region, including methodological work, resource mobilization, and procurement support for evaluations.
The Specialist is responsible for contributing to the design and effective conduct and uptake of evaluations in accordance with the UNICEF evaluation policy. He/she ensures that the UNEG Norms and Standards for evaluation as well as well UNICEF evaluation coverage benchmarks and quality standards are upheld.
How can you make a difference?
Under the supervision of the Regional Evaluation Advisor, The MC Evaluation Specialist works with the evaluation specialists/focal points in their duties in the assigned countries.
The MC Evaluation Specialist ensures credibility, impartiality, and independence of the evaluation function in the COs under her/his responsibility. He/she also facilitates the development and implementation of evaluation workplans in each Country Office and provides guidance and technical support to sectors and to the Country Management Team as well as the national government on evaluation and on related matters.
The MC Evaluation Specialist helps the Country Offices to manage its evaluation partnerships, including inter-agency relations within the UN, and collaboration with the Regional Office and Headquarters. The Specialist may also be assigned more specific duties that enable her/him to be a resource person across the region, including methodological work, resource mobilization, and procurement support for evaluations.
The Specialist is responsible for contributing to the design and effective conduct and uptake of evaluations in accordance with the UNICEF evaluation policy. He/she ensures that the UNEG Norms and Standards for evaluation as well as well UNICEF evaluation coverage benchmarks and quality standards are upheld.
Key functions, accountabilities and related duties/tasks
- Evaluation Leadership
Support the Country Offices under his/her responsibility and their national partners to develop and implement a plan of evaluation activities that will provide relevant and strategic information to manage Country Programmes and relevant national policies and programmes toward achieving results for children in both humanitarian and non-humanitarian environments.
The Multi-Country Evaluation Specialist will work with assigned Country Offices:
- Guide the offices and their partners to identify priority evaluation topics in accordance with the UNICEF Evaluation Policy, the UNICEF Strategic Plan, the Sustainable Development Goals, the Country Programme Document and national policies and programmes.
- Identify the Evaluation objectives, priorities, and activities required for effective Country Office and partner Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans. In humanitarian response situations, help the Country Office adjust the prevailing evaluation plan in UNICEF Evidence Information System Integration system (EISI), in accordance with guidance for emergency situations. Likewise, adjust the evaluation plans in EISI in accordance with the transition through the stages of transition and recovery.
- Identify gaps in knowledge and work with sector managers to ensure these are addressed. Facilitate cross-sectoral collaboration in the execution of these efforts.
- Provide technical support to ensure that a set of evaluation performance indicators is monitored and fed into decision-making processes in the context of the multi-year and annual evaluation plans in EISI, as well as associated office-wide management plans and work plans, ensuring close follow up on the implementation of planned evaluative activities .
- Consolidate evaluation plans within required systems and documentation, including the EISI planning platform and in the Costed Evaluation Plan that accompanies the Country Programme Document for consideration by the Executive Board. Ensure that evaluation findings and lessons learned are incorporated in country programme, Programme Strategy Notes and other planning, and reporting documents. Support the conceptualization of MTRs (where applicable) from an evaluation perspective.
- Monitor progress and support Country Management Teams (CMTs), Country office Annual Reports and, where applicable, Mid-term Reviews (MTR), as well as other review moments that lead to plan revisions. Provide input to management reports, including relevant sections of the Country Office Annual Report.
- Evaluation Conduct and Use
Ensure that UNICEF-supported evaluations are designed and implemented to established UN quality standards, and the results are disseminated in a timely fashion and used by stakeholders in order to improve programme performance and contribute to wider learning.
The Multi Country Evaluation Specialist will support Country Offices to:
- Undertake an evaluability assessment of themes listed in costed evaluation plans, as required, and make recommendations on changes to improve the evaluability of the programs.
- Assist Country Offices and their partners to formulate Terms of Reference and evaluation designs of high quality. The MC Evaluation Specialist is to sign off on the TORs before they can advance to recruitment of the evaluation team. Work with the country office evaluation specialist/focal point to manage the recruitment of appropriate and highly qualified consultants.
- The Specialist will closely monitor the implementation of the evaluation, quality review the deliverables and will indicate when the quality is high enough that it can be accepted. As part of this role, she/he will help establish and manage the necessary governance bodies (Steering Committee; Reference Group) for their inputs into the quality assurance process.
- Work closely with external evaluation consultants/teams to enable them to deliver results according to the agreed Terms of Reference. Exercise sufficient oversight that quality is assured, and any quality problems are detected soon enough that timely remedial action is possible.
- Develop and implement a multi-method communication plan to disseminate the evaluation report to intended audiences via user-friendly methods. Fosters organizational accountability and learning based on the outcomes of the evaluations, working with other Evaluation Managers in the region. Promotes further dissemination and use of evaluation to internal and external audiences (including national government, development partners, CSOs and private sector partners. Regularly documents emerging good practices of evaluation use in the countries under her/his responsibility.
- Support stakeholders to prepare a formal management response that reflects their reaction/views on the evaluation recommendations. Assist the COs to monitor and report on the implementation of agreed management response actions. At a larger scale, support the CO to find means to engage partners around the value of the evaluation, with a consistent goal of increasing utilization and reach.
- Support country-led evaluations of policies and programmes and the consideration of the results by partners.
- Evaluation Capacity Strengthening and Partnership building
Ensure that evaluation capacities of Country Office staff and national partners – including government and civil society – are strengthened, enabling them to increasingly engage in and lead evidence generating processes. Ensure that the Country Office is effectively linked to wider UNICEF capacity building developments in a way that both contributes to and benefits from organizational learning.
The Multi Country Evaluation Specialist will support Country Offices to:
Build and strengthen strategic partnerships through networking and advocacy with local/national governments and sub-regional governmental bodies, UN system agency partners, donors, NGOs, funding organization, research institutes, including universities, and the private sector. Promotes joint Govt/UNICEF evaluations that rigorously assess national policies, programmes and innovative models.
- Ensure that sufficient systems and procedures are in place within the COs under his/her responsibility for appropriate ethics reviews of evidence activities as per the UNICEF Procedure for Ethical Standards in Research, Evaluation and Data Collection and Analysis.
- Foster policy-level and academic partnerships to support national evaluation capacity development initiatives. Ensure that evaluation capacities of country office staff and national partners – government and civil society – are strengthened enabling relevant Government units to increasingly engage in and lead evaluation processes.
- The MC Evaluation Specialist is expected to be a well-informed focal point on a range of learning options and themes, and a first point of contact for the COs to arrange upskilling efforts.
To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…
- An Advanced University Degree in the social sciences, economics, public policy, statistics, or in research methods is required. A degree or certification/accreditation in Evaluation is a significant advantage.
- A minimum of 8 years of professional experience in the implementation of equity-focused evaluations and the management of the evaluation function at national and international level.
- Experience of evaluation in humanitarian settings is required.
- Experience in supporting national evaluation capacity and working with professional evaluation associations;
- Experience in evaluation design and in conducting evaluations as per UNICEF and UNEG norms and standards for Evaluation in the UN System;
- Familiarity with methods used in conducting both ‘up-stream’ evaluations (e.g. focusing on policies, strategies and systems), as well as ‘down-stream’ evaluations (e.g. focusing on delivery of programmes and projects) is an asset.
- Experience in related evidence functions is an asset, including Social Policy, Public Policy, Quantitative and Qualitative Data Analysis, Research, Programme Audit, and Programme Planning and Monitoring. Experience in these areas cannot be substituted for the Evaluation experience but is an advantage.
- Experience in the region where the post is situated is advantageous.
- Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of French or Arabic is an asset.
Technical Knowledge:
- Professional expertise in evaluation process management, dissemination of results, and utilization.
- Technical knowledge of methodologies employed in Evaluation, including Results-based Management (RBM), theories of change, stakeholders mapping, standards and models, research designs, quantitative/qualitative/mixed methods of data collection, validity/reliability testing of data, data and qualitative information analysis and interpretation, and statistical inference methods.
- Technical knowledge in routine monitoring systems; preferably those associated with Health, Nutrition, Education, Child Protection, Social Policy or WASH sectors
- Technical knowledge on utilization of evaluation and other evidence approaches to realize Gender Equality and Human Rights based development.
- Familiarity with ethics review processes.
- Exposure to mobile technology platforms, ‘big data’ and other innovative techniques
- Use of data and information quantitative and qualitative software for data analysis is an asset
- Knowledge of UNICEF & UNEG Evaluation norms & standards
- Communication skills (oral, written and in developing effective and user-targeted materials).
- Publications which show sound experience with evaluation methods are an advantage.
For every Child, you demonstrate…
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 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, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.
Remarks:
Mobility is a condition of international professional employment with UNICEF and an underlying premise of the international civil service.
Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.
View our competency framework at
http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/files/UNICEF_Competencies.pdf
