Deputy Country Director, Data.FI

Deputy Country Director, Data.FI

Palladium Group

Abuja, Nigeria

Project Overview and Role:

Data.FI is a five-year global project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to support the HIV and COVID-19 response. Data.FI partners with programs to accelerate and sustain access to high-quality data to expedite HIV and COVID-19 epidemic control and maintenance. By improving global, regional, national, and community/local in-depth analyses of HIV and COVID-19 epidemiologic and programmatic data, Data.FI expedites program achievements to improve client services and attain and sustain control of the epidemics. Data.FI supports host country governments to enhance existing health information systems (HIS), informing management responses to gaps in programming and sustaining impact by supporting local partner transition.

Purpose of the Position:

• Palladium is seeking a Deputy Country Director to support the Country Director in executing an efficient and effective oversight of all elements of Data.FI Nigeria project activities;
• Her/his primary responsibilities are to provide supporting leadership, management, and general technical direction, ensuring an integrated vision among different components and actors, and a focus on achieving results defined in annual work plans;
• This individual must act as the secondary liaison with USAID/Nigeria, relevant Government of Nigeria (GON) Ministries, Departments and Agencies, implementing partners and other stakeholders;
• The position requires significant coordination skills, broad general and technical knowledge, an ability to cope with multiple interests and challenges, experience in Nigeria, and skills to ensure coherence and consistency in the face of urgent deadlines;
• As part of the Data.FI Nigeria Senior Management Team, the incumbent will work in coordination with the Global and Regional Project Teams, Nigeria Country Director and Nigeria Activity Team Leads;
• S/he will supervise technical delivery of project health informatics, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) data analytics, visualization, and data use activities, Surveillance activities, TB,Covid-19, and Global Health Security(GHS) projects implementation in collaboration with the respective activity leads.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

• Serving as a member of the senior leadership team of the project and supporting the Country Director in oversight of project staff and activities;
• Serving as the secondary point of contact for USAID/Nigeria and other USAID programs operating in Nigeria, as well as with GON officials and key partners;
• Serving as the Country Director’s primary point of contact for current information about the status of activity implementation;
• Serving as acting Country Director when incumbent is unavailable;
• Co-leading and/or reviewing and monitoring programmatic functions, i.e., development of work plans, budgets, quarterly/annual reports, and ensuring effective implementation of program strategy as articulated by in the work plan;
• Maintaining effective and open communication throughout the project with the Country Director, USAID, Project Director, project operations teams, and other relevant stakeholders;
• Working with the Country Director and other project staff to continuously refine implementation processes by integrating lessons learned and best practices;
• Maintain strong, positive working relationships with Palladium colleagues, USAID Washington, USAID Mission and partners, including but not limited to major sub-recipients, local grantees, subcontractors, and local governments, to ensure effective implementation of project activities;
• In collaboration with the M&E team ensure relevant staff use, maintaining and regularly uploading data to the project M&E system;
• Support the establishment of quality control standards in-line with Data.FI and USAID standards;
• Build capacity of local partner organizations to increase ownership and sustainability of activities beyond the life of the project;
• Represent the project at national, regional, and global technical forums as required;
• Contribute to new business development: proposal development through contributions to strategy, partnerships and written contributions to the technical approach and capability statements;
• Primary technical lead in development on project workplans, concept notes and technical business contributions to the current and prospective project implementation;
• Other duties as delegated by the Country Director.

Reporting Requirements:

The role reports to the Data.FI Nigeria Country Director. Reporting requirements include:

• Attendance at all regular Data.FI Nigeria team meetings;
• Provision of regular updates to the line manager, including status of Key Result Areas (KRAs), and any other material matters and/or areas of concern;
• Contributions to Data.FI internal project and client reporting;
• Other reporting as requested by the line manager.

Required Qualifications/Work Experiences:

• PhD or Master’s level education in Public Health, Health Informatics or another relevant field of study;
• At least five years of experience in senior management of complex PEPFAR-funded public health programs or programs of similar scope and size, including program, financial and administration management; staff oversight and supervision; award contractual compliance; sub-award management; and tracking project performance and costs via specific funding streams;
• Additional eight years of progressively increasing responsibility in health information systems strengthening, or a related field; recent experience with this work in Nigeria. Experience in building public-private partnerships preferred;
• Demonstrated ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with USAID, government officials, and other development partners;
• Demonstrated experience in working with USAID and PEPFAR partners in Nigeria, to improve program performance;
• Experience developing, communicating, and implementing a project vision and aligning key stakeholders around the vision;
• Willingness to travel within Nigeria 25-30% of the time and internationally, periodically.

Key Competencies and Professional Expertise:

• Detail-oriented and deadline-driven with strong organizational skills, and ability to work in a dynamic and agile environment with changing requirements and priorities;
• Demonstrated skills in crisis management and problem-solving; ability to achieve consensus among multiple stakeholders;
• Excellent written and verbal skills in English; ability to communicate technical information to audiences with varying levels of technical expertise.

M&E, Data Analytics, Visualization and Data Use competencies:

• Demonstrated understanding of the PEPFAR data streams, the analytic questions facing PEPFAR programs and PEPFAR reporting requirements; experience with PEPFAR surge and high-frequency reporting (HFR) preferred;
• Experience in leading and managing rigorous and evidence-based data quality assessments (DQAs);
• Demonstrated extensive experience in training on M&E methodologies, data collection and analysis, and dissemination of findings;
• Demonstrated experience writing evaluation reports and data quality assessment reports for USAID or other donors;
• Experience in development of data use cases, information products for epidemic control, and peer-review journal publications;
• Proven skills in data analysis with proficiency in statistical packages – Stata, SPSS, NVivo, advanced MS Excel, BI applications;
• Experience with DHIS2, the Nigeria National Data Repository (NDR), the Site Improvement Management System (SIMS), the automated partner performance reporting (APPR) platform preferred.

Health Informatics Competencies:

• Demonstrated understanding of HIS, and the importance of health information systems (HIS) to reaching PEPFAR, UNAIDS 95-95-95, and GON goals to end the epidemic;
• At least eight years’ experience advising on HMIS or routine HIS;
• Working knowledge of patient-level and aggregate data management systems; experience with LAMISPlus, the Nigeria;
• National OVC Management Information System (NOMIS) preferred;
• Knowledge of software development cycles, project management principles to manage outputs with multi-disciplinary teams, including extensive knowledge of IT principles, methods, and techniques; experience with Jira, Confluence and other elements of the Atlassian Suite preferred.

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