Job Opportunity: Senior Adviser on Global Campaign Programmes

As part of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG), prior to the adoption of the Agenda 2030, UNMC was mandated to lead part of the global consultation on post 2015 to make the most inclusive and transparent process.

As a result, 10 million people participated in this open consultation, and told the United Nations what would make their lives better through the MY World 2015 survey, and the World We Want 2015 platform. This has set a new precedent at the United Nations and with policy makers around the world – opening the door to more people centered policy making.

As natural continuation, after the adoption of new Agenda was adopted in September 2015, UNMC’s was extended as a special initiative of UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon mandated to support peoples’ participation in SDG implementation. The now called UN SDG Action Campaign will work to build new multi-stakeholder partnerships to ensure a transparent dialogue between decision makers and their constituencies, especially the most marginalized and vulnerable populations. It will continue to leverage cutting-edge communication technologies, to show the human story behind development challenges and create deeper empathy and understanding between decision-makers and their people. Finally, it will use data, technology and innovation to empower people with the knowledge and tools to become actively involved in supporting their governments with SDG implementation and to continue to involve as many people as possible in the decision-making process.
UN SDG Action Campaign has started last year to develop its own strategy for popularizing the goals including the development of MY World 2030 survey, one of UNMC’s flagship products and successor of MY World 2015.  The new survey aims at becoming a global platform to measure SDG’s progress according to peoples’ perspective through citizens’ driven data, ergo moving from a consultative tool to an accountability one.

Building on the success of its predecessor, MY World 2030 survey is expected to sustain a massive global reach out, with special emphasis in the most vulnerable communities, throughout the implementation of the new agenda as well as implement a more scientific and representative approach requested by policy makers. Plans to start an early implementation are already underway, consequently, the UN SDG Action Campaign is currently looking for a highly qualified and experienced candidate to provide strategic leadership for the MY World Scientific programme as well as other key campaign programmes such as the Global Festival of Action and Data Playground events.

Background: MY World 2030

The MY World 2030 Initiative is an adaptable platform for citizen-generated data and engagement with the SDGs. MY World 2030 allows people from around the world to tell their leaders what they are passionate about in the SDG agenda and give a gauge of perceived progress over the next 15 years. The project will collect globally comparable and nationally adaptive data to report back on SDG progress whilst also building dialogue between decision makers and citizens to contribute a “people’s perspective” on how to implement the new agenda at different levels. The data is intended to triangulate the official information coming from the SDG’s indicators, with peoples’ perspective on how progress is affecting their lives.

The data will be gathered through four main channels:

• MY World Scientific: This track provides the opportunity for country teams to roll out a nationally stratified representative study covering how people feel their lives are changing across all 17 SDGs.
• MY World Community: a set of three questions, to measure the level of awareness of the SDGs, peoples ‘priorities and their level of satisfaction with the progress of the Agenda. The survey can be rolled out online using myworld2030.org, offline, or through mobile phones. This channel is envisioned to be primarily used to encourage participation and mobilization.
• MY World National Editions: the set of three core My World questions can be supplemented, where country teams wish to do so by applying national/local editions of the survey e.g MY Kenya or MY Nairobi., allowing a broader mobilization on issues of particular local relevance and concern, using the SDG question library- a pre-tested set of more than 200 questions to measure progress in each of the 17 Goals, according to peoples’ opinions
• MY World Big Data: The above complementary streams will be further enhanced by the big data derived analytics from a variety of sources such as social media, mobile phone usage and other industry data. A taxonomy of key words will be made available for country teams to carry out ‘big data’ searched.

These terms of reference relate to the tasks and responsibilities for the MY World Scientific component of this initiative.

Project Design

• Market Research – research into citizen participation models such as ‘Our Say’, U-report, Project Everyone and Global Citizen to glean key learnings and best practices and apply to project design of SDG Action Campaign Programmes;
• Design a strategy, build partnerships and a work plan to ensure that the MY World Scientific programme delivers timely and relevant scientific data for use at key political moments, in particular for the annual High Level Political Forum in New York
• Develop and finalize project concept note and proposal documents, including presentations to potential donors for MY World Scientific project;
• Design creative feedback loops for the scientific data generated, including the annual Data Playground event with Microsoft and other key event feedback events
• Provide strategic direction and oversight to the annual Global Festival of Action conference in Bonn, Germany
• Provide strategic direction and develop implementation modalities for the Regional roll outs of the Global Festival of Action.
• Support the development of a project document template and other supporting documentation that would allow UN Country Teams and Member States to integrate MY World Scientific into their ongoing SDG Implementation planning.

Project implementation/ management:

• Ensure the quality of the planning, implementation and monitoring of ongoing MY World Scientific activities in 10 priority countries across mobile, online and offline channels as appropriate;
• Ensure the quality of delivery of the project suppliers and partners, tracking individual progress towards deliverables and ensuring regular submission of reports;
• Ensure effective internal coordination within and between the core partners, UNDP, UN SDG Action Campaign, and Overseas Development Institute;
• Support the establishment of constructive and collaborative working relationships with key stakeholders in the policy space, including UNDP, UN DESA, Paragon Partnerships, We the Peoples and others;
• Prepare for, chair and minute bi-weekly status calls with the MY World Scientific working group to ensure targets are achieved to deadline;
• Represent MY World Scientific at relevant coordination meetings and events within the UN system, and with partners;
• Work with operations associate to manage and monitor the project budget and resource requests from partners;
• Set up knowledge and information sharing systems across the various members of the MY World Scientific working group;
• Put in place risk management tools and techniques to map project scenarios and deliver effective mitigation plans.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

The below deliverables must be submitted with the certification of payment requests. These will be reviewed by the Director of the UN SDG Action Campaign.

Specific Deliverables

• Submit a project concept note which articulates the project roadmap – 1 concept note;
• Submit project work plan (Phase 1) – February – 1 work plan;
• Undertake weekly Project Working Group meeting with relevant counterparts including setting up agenda and circulate minutes of the meeting and follow up on related action points;
• Design strategy for creative feedback loops for the scientific data generated, including the annual Data Playground event with Microsoft and other key regional and national events feedback events – 1 strategy document
• Support the development of a project document template and other supporting documentation that would allow UN Country Teams and Member States to integrate MY World Scientific into their ongoing SDG Implementation planning – 1 project template/handbook
• Provide strategic direction on concept and work plan to the annual Global Festival of Action conference in Bonn, Germany and other potential regional festival that might occur – 1 concept note
• Provide strategic direction and develop implementation modalities for the Regional roll outs of the Global Festival of Action – 1 regional handbook
• Work with UN SDG Action Campaign communication team and advertising/PR firm to ensure MY World Scientific is properly described and featured in a comprehensive MY World communication strategy and roll out activities (targeting priority countries) – 1 report;
• Ensure the development and smooth operations of the MY World Scientific information pages and other assets available via the UN SDG Action Campaign website – regular progress milestones;
• Outline opportunities for MY World Scientific data and principles to feed into existing communications and monitoring efforts around the SDG agenda the broader efforts of the UN Development Group; ongoing
• Compile and submit monthly project progressive and financial reports to Project Advisory Board.

• Demonstrates knowledge of scientific opinion polling, sampling surveys, questionnaire design;
• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Functional:

• Demonstrated ability to interact with individuals of different national and cultural backgrounds and beliefs, which includes the willingness to understand different views and opinions;
• Ability to work under pressure, to prioritize and to show a spirit of initiative and a capacity to work in an independent way with limited supervision;
• Self-management and emotional intelligence;
• Excellent communication skills;
• Campaign goal definition, development and management, with strong partnership development capabilities;
• Fundraising / grant writing;
• End-user needs assessment, collaborative design, iterative development.

• Master’s degree in International Relations, Development, Public Administration, or related field is required.

Experience:

• Minimum of 7 years of experience in opinion polling, campaign development, international development is required.

Language:

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required;
• Working knowledge of French or Spanish would be an asset

Application Procedure

The application package containing the following (to be uploaded as one file):

• Online application with brief description of why the Offer considers her/himself the most suitable for the assignment;
• Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects and specifying the relevant assignment period (from/to), as well as the email and telephone contacts of at least three (3) professional references.
• A two-page methodology on how the Offeror will conduct the work including a Work Plan and approach in delivering the required outputs within the assignment period (500 words maximum)

Note: The above documents need to be scanned in one file and uploaded to the online application as one document.

Shortlisted candidates (ONLY) will be requested to submit a Financial Proposal.

• The financial proposal shall specify a total lump sum amount, and payment terms around the specific and measurable deliverables of the TOR. Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR, and deliverables accepted and certified by the technical manager.
• The financial proposal must be all-inclusive and take into account various expenses that will be incurred during the contract, including: the daily professional fee; cost of travel from the home base to the duty station and vice versa, where required; living allowances at the duty station; communications, utilities and consumables; life, health and any other insurance; risks and inconveniences related to work under hardship and hazardous conditions (e.g., personal security needs, etc.), when applicable; and any other relevant expenses related to the performance of services under the contract.
• This consultancy is a home-based assignment, therefore, there is no envisaged travel cost to join duty station/repatriation travel.
• The consultancy has occasional travels/meetings at the Campaign headquarters in New York, USA and Bonn, Germany, and possible travel to support the implementation of the project. Cost for these travels should not be included in the financial proposal. Payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.
• If the Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.
• The Financial Proposal is to be emailed as per the instruction in the separate email that will be sent to shortlisted candidates.

Evaluation process

Applicants are reviewed based on Required Skills and Experience stated above and based on the technical evaluation criteria outlined below.  Applicants will be evaluated based on cumulative scoring.  When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

• Being responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
• Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation where technical criteria weighs 70% and Financial criteria/ Proposal weighs 30%.

Technical evaluation – Total 70% (70 points):

• Criteria 1. Demonstrated ability to define and launch online polling mobilizations: Weight = 20%; Maximum Points: 20.
• Criteria 2. Demonstrated expertise in developing and managing relationships, particularly in the polling and research fields: Weight = 10%; Maximum Points: 10.
• Criteria 3. Project management: Weight = 10%; Maximum Points: 10.
• Criteria 4. Interview: Weight = 30%; Maximum Points: 30.

Having reviewed applications received, UNDP will invite the top three to four shortlisted candidates for interview. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

Candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (49 points) of the maximum obtainable points for the technical criteria (70 points) shall be considered for the financial evaluation.

Financial evaluation – Total 30% (30 points):

The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:
p = y (µ/z), where
p = points for the financial proposal being evaluated
y = maximum number of points for the financial proposal
µ = price of the lowest priced proposal
z = price of the proposal being evaluated

Contract Award

• Candidate obtaining the highest combined scores in the combined score of Technical and Financial evaluation will be considered technically qualified and will be offered to enter into contract with UNDP.

Institutional arrangement

• The consultant will work under the guidance and direct supervision of Director of the UN SDG Action Campaign in the Bureau for Programme and Policy Support (BPPS) and will be responsible for the fulfilment of the deliverables as specified above. The consultant is expected to incorporate comments and suggestions from other reviewers on the documents to be submitted.
• The Consultant will be responsible for providing her/his own laptop.

Payment modality

• Payments are based upon output, i.e. upon delivery of the services specified above and deliverables accepted and upon certification of satisfactory completion by the manager.
• The work week will be based on 35 hours, i.e. on a 7 hour working day, with core hours being between 9h00 and 18h00 daily.

Annexes (click on the hyperlink to access the documents):

View job opportunity

Annex 1 – UNDP P-11 Form for ICs

Annex 2 – IC Contract Template

Annex 3 – IC General Terms and Conditions

Annex 4 – RLA Template

Any request for clarification must be sent by email to cpu.bids@undp.org.  The UNDP Central Procurement Unit will respond by email and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants.