Innovation Specialist NGO Job UNICEF

Innovation Specialist Job. IT Jobs In Kenya

UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built: we offer our staff diverse opportunities for personal and professional development that will help them develop a fulfilling career while delivering on a rewarding mission. We pride ourselves on a culture that helps staff thrive, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

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Policy and Strategic Development for Digital-enabled Programming

Digital Transformation and Innovation Strategies

Provide leadership to development of DX and innovation strategies at RO and CO level; including governance and management, Innovation Portfolio approaches, partnerships and resource mobilization, assessment of gaps, opportunities and scale-up strategy in support of CO priorities.

Participation in programme and management processes

Integrate innovation into the programme planning lifecycle. Align with programme priorities (e.g. AWP) and attend planning meetings (PCM) to exercise functional accountabilities.

Leadership and Quality Assurance

Oversee development and quality assurance during planning and deployment of innovation initiatives; participate in establishing and maintaining standards, documentation and support mechanisms.

Manage the Innovation function, and provide technical and programmatic support:

Business Relationship Management

Manage Business and Programme Relationship services to define high-level requirements; document and match requirements and guide the design, development and deployment of appropriate Innovative solutions.

Portfolio Coordination

Lead deployment of the Innovation portfolio approach to solutions prioritised for UNICEF programming

Support and assist design of Innovation interventions

Provide support and technical assistance to the Country Office in the identification, selection, concept design, deployment and sustainability of Innovation interventions to address bottlenecks towards the achievement of programme results.

Identify and assess new Innovations

Assist programme sections to identify and assess new initiatives, or new phases of on-going initiatives, with immediate potential to improve UNICEF programming.

Solution procurement and evaluation

Assist the review of technical solutions to ensure UNICEF standards are followed; contribute to project management processes, generation and review of terms of reference and vendor selection.

Deployment advice and support

Advisory and assistance with implementation strategy, including technical oversight, troubleshooting and the documentation of challenges and resolutions.

Design thinking

Support human/user-centred design methods to enable user-acceptance testing, evaluation, documentation and analysis.

Engage and maintain partnerships and networks

Engage and maintain partnerships and networks

Develop partnerships and networks with local solution providers, innovators, NGOs, cultural and religious organisations, the private sector, local media and academia to build and provide a space to nurture and test innovative initiatives and build local capacity.

Advocacy and communications

Represent the country office in external, inter-agency or partner forums on Innovation.

Proposal and partnership development

Identify opportunities for resource mobilisation and new partnerships and lead proposal and partnership development efforts in close collaboration with other Regional Offices, where applicable.

Provide advice and support to programme partners

Provide technical and operational support to a wide range of stakeholders and partners on UNICEF policies, practices, standards and norms.

Standards and procedures for ownership

Work with stakeholders to help develop standards, procedures and partnerships for Innovation interventions and their transition to relevant Government and Civil Society Institutions.

Transfer and skill-sharing for programme partners

Build and sustain effective close working partnerships with government counterparts and national stakeholders through active sharing and transfer of knowledge, skills and tools to foster and facilitate innovation-enabled programming.

Document localized partners and profiles

Develop a catalogue of potential country specific Innovation partners and their profiles/areas of engagement to promote and enhance UNICEF goals for outcomes for children

Knowledge Management

Share lessons learned

Identify, capture, synthesize and share lessons learned from Innovation for integration into broader knowledge development planning, advocacy and communication efforts.

Landscape mapping

Maintain an inventory of Innovation interventions, assets, resources and networks.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning

Work with PME to ensure documentation and clear monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for innovation including baseline data collection, on-going monitoring, as well as first phase data collection and analysis.

Contribute to Peer Support Networks

Contribute, share and collaborate with Office of Innovation, with regional and global innovation networks and activities.

Capacity Building

Data analysis for evidence generation

Build capacity of programme staff in analysing the large amounts of data generated through innovation initiatives including the use of data visualization techniques and analytics tools.

Co-create appropriate solutions

Work directly with section chiefs to co-create strategies on how innovation can support the country programme.

Provide training to stakeholders and end-users

Participate as resource person in capacity building initiatives to enhance the competencies, capacity and knowledge within the programmes; train UNICEF staff, partners, government counterparts and other end users in innovation approaches and methodologies.

Build awareness around Innovation & Frontier Technology

Develop capabilities within Country Office on appropriate use of frontier technology and innovations such as UAVs, wearables, IoTs, mobile money, blockchain etc.

Minimum requirements:

• Education : Advanced university degree in International Affairs, International Relations, International Development, Business Management, Computer Science, Data Science, Information Management, or related practical experience
• Work Experience: A minimum of five years of professional experience in ICT management, business analysis or similar, in a large international organization and/or corporation.
• Experience with Programme, Digital, Product and / or Data Innovations in low bandwidth settings is required.
• Experience identifying, designing, and implementing solutions for large-scale projects with technical components – including supervising external vendors; responsibility for business analysis, budgets, contracts, project management and procurement is required.

Desirables

• Experience with Innovation methodologies, including Human Centered Design and Agile / Iterative programme planning is desirable.
• Experience with Open Source, Open Standards and Open Data is desirable.
• Experience with Innovating on-top of mature Digital Public Goods, including RapidPro, DHIS2, ODK and other technologies is desirable.
• Field experience, including working with Government and Implementing Partners at national level is desirable.
• Experience with developing partnerships and resource mobilization is desirable.
• Exposure to UNICEF, UN or other INGO programmatic areas, including (but not limited to) health, nutrition, child protection and/or education, and experience in applying technical solutions to address programmatic issues is desirable.

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How to Apply

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