Planning and Monitoring Specialist

How can you make a difference? 

Summary of key functions/accountabilities:

Setting standards for, and lead, programme planning and monitoring at the field office level:

• Lead and provide technical support to the process of developing and monitoring Field office Work Plans, including reporting on progress of the equity and gender marker as outlined in the Programme Policy and Procedures Guidance.
• Provide technical support in organising and managing annual/mid-year/mid-term/end term field office and country programme reviews ensuring consistency with objectives and goals set out in the field office workplans, national workplans and contribute to the Annual Management Plan.
• Monitor follow-up actions based on management decisions resulting from Field Office and country Office performance monitoring.
• Provide technical support to develop and finalize partnership programme documents PDs at the field office, quality assurance of the PD results frameworks and workplans in line with the CPD and the field office workplans.
• Provide technical support to the development of the donor proposals at the field office level and quality assurance of the proposals results frameworks to ensure alignment with the CPD and field office workplans priorities.

Situation Monitoring and Assessment

• Ensure that the field office have timely and accurate measurement of change in conditions in the field office, including monitoring of socio-economic trends and the state’s policy, economic or institutional context, to facilitate planning and to draw conclusions about the impact of programmes.
• Support national partners in the establishment and management of sub-national statistical databases, (e.g socio-economic profiles) ensuring that key indicators are readily accessible by key stakeholders. Potential uses include the Situation Analysis, Common Country Assessment, Early Warning Monitoring Systems, and Mid-Term Reviews.
• Support a collectively Situation Monitoring and Assessment system owned by all key partners at the field office level which supports the preparation of field level statistical and analytic reports on the status of children’s and women’s rights issues.
• In humanitarian response situations, provide professional support for one or more rapid assessments (inter-agency or independently if necessary) to be carried out within the first 48-72 hours and humanitarian performance monitoring at the field level.

Programme Performance Monitoring

• In close collaboration with the PRIME section in Port Sudan, ensure that the Field Office has quality information to assess progress towards expected results established in annual work plans
• Support the programme components at the field office level to effectively monitor and report on the intersectoral programme results, cross sectoral programme component results and field office results to facilitate programme coherence and convergence where appropriate.
• Contribute to development of programme monitoring framework for the field office, in line with the national level programme monitoring framework, including technical backstopping to the field team for convergent programming.
• Provide technical support to ensure that a set of programme performance indicators is identified and adjusted as necessary at the field office level, with inputs of all concerned partners in the context of the multi-year and annual Integrated Monitoring and Evaluation plans, and the field office Work Plans.
• Coordinate with partners to ensure that monitoring systems at the field office level are properly designed, and that data collection and analysis from field visits are coordinated and standardised across programmes to feed into to programme performance monitoring, with special attention to humanitarian response.
• Drawing on monitoring and analysis of key program performance and management indicators, provide professional input to field office management reports, including relevant sections of the annual reports.
• Act as the field office focal point for any national-based planning, monitoring and evaluation initiatives and facilitate data collection and field visits by external evaluations if required.
• Support UNICEF-supported evaluations at the field office level as necessary. Monitor and ensure the quality of the field work and data management during the implementation phase, and the quality of the analysis and ease of understanding during the report writing phase.

Planning and Monitoring Capacity Building

• In close collaboration with the PRIME Section in Port Sudan, ensure that the Planning and monitoring capacities of Field Office staff and national partners – government and civil society – are strengthened enabling them to increasingly engage in and lead monitoring and evaluation processes.

Data and Information Management at the field office level

• Provide leadership for the IM function at the Field Office Level in close coordination with PRIME Section.
• Responsible for leading and managing the collection, analysis and sharing of information that is essential for field and section staff to make informed, evidence-based, strategic decisions.

Networking and partnership building:

• Build and sustain effective close working partnerships with government counterparts and national stakeholders at the field office level, through active sharing of information and knowledge and build their capacity for planning and implementation.
• Participate in appropriate inter-agency meetings/events with inter-agency partners/colleagues at the field office level as necessary.

Innovation, knowledge management and capacity building:

• Identify, capture, synthesize and share lessons learned from the field office monitoring efforts, for integration into the broader office knowledge development planning and management efforts. Ensure innovations are sought and implemented for planning and monitoring, especially with use of digital technology for data collection and analysis.
• Participate as resource person in capacity building initiatives to enhance the competencies of clients/stakeholders.

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Minimum requirements:

• Education: An advanced university degree in one of the following fields is required: social sciences, statistics, planning development, planning. Relevant work experience will be accepted in lieu of an advanced degree
• Experience:  Five years of relevant experience in programme development and implementation, including monitoring and evaluation activities, with at least five years of professional work experience.
• Language Requirements: Fluency in English and Arabic is required.

Source: https://jobs.unicef.org/cw/en-us/job/577488