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Consultancy Title: .NET Web Developer – Global Immunization Budget Database Consultant

Section/Division/Duty Station: Programme Group, Division of Analysis, Planning & Monitor, Data Analytics, UNICEF NYHQ

Duration: December 20, 2024, to December 20, 2025

Home/ Office Based: NYHQ / Remote

 

About UNICEF

If you are a committed, creative professional and are passionate about making a lasting difference for children, the world’s leading children’s rights organization would like to hear from you. For 70 years, UNICEF has been working on the ground in 190 countries and territories to promote children’s survival, protection and development. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments. UNICEF has over 12,000 staff in more than 145 countries.

BACKGROUND

Purpose of Activity/ Assignment:

Economic analysis of immunization resources constitutes an important area of work in support of countries’ efforts to protect and increase domestic investments in immunization. However, challenges remain in identifying and analyzing immunization resources in domestic government budgets. There is substantial variation in how information on vaccine procurement and immunization delivery is presented in national budget documents across different countries, and even year-to-year for a given country. Often this information is only available in non-searchable PDF files, which complicates identification and analysis. Improving the accessibility of immunization budget information and supporting its interpretation through the provision of standardized analysis and data visualizations can provide insights and evidence to strengthen advocacy at a global, regional, and country level around sustainable immunization financing.

The solution is the Global Immunization Budget Database (GIBD), a custom .NET web-based application powered by AI and machine learning models, designed to standardize and analyze global immunization budget data for insightful cross-country comparison and trend analysis. GIBD enables UNICEF to access global immunization budget data via a web browser, secured with UNICEF credentials for global reach and data protection. It utilizes artificial intelligence to tackle complex data extraction and manipulation challenges and offers dashboards designed for insightful trend visualization, supported by automated analysis for strategic decision-making.

UNICEF requires the services of an external consultant to support additional development of GIBD, geared towards making GIBD a robust enterprise-level product, capable of accommodating extensive data analysis requirements. The focus is on extending its functionalities to support new features like multi-lingual datasets and numerical systems different from the decimal system. The work shall create maintainable, automated processes to perform data extraction from unstructured data sources and harmonize multiple data streams into a central database. The work shall be designed such that it can accommodate the addition of new streams of data as and when they become available.

The consultant shall interact with the Frontier Data and Tech Unit (FDTU) and the Program Group Immunization Team (PGI) to gather data and software requirements. The consultant shall also research and test potential methods for improving existent AI solutions and increase the precision of automatic data extraction from unstructured files.

There is lack of funding to cover all planned activities that continue until the end of 2025. Some deliverables are planned to be completed if additional resources become available.

Scope of Work:

The consultant will be expected to take on the following duties:

• Facilitate with relevant stakeholders including UNICEF staff, other UN agencies, development partners, and government officials for overall planning and development of the database and the related software components.
• Design of a data model and database schema for the immunization budget database in consultation with PGI and FDTU
• Further development of a .NET web-based back-end data ingestion system, which uses Machine Learning and AI to manipulate multi-lingual unstructured data sources (data extraction, data validation, semantic enrichment) and to harmonize the data and store it in a central repository.
• Further development of a .NET REST API to provide access to the data stored in the central database.
• Iteratively release multiple versions of all the software components for user testing and incorporate stakeholders’ feedback in the development cycle.
• Development of automated testing on the software’s functionality and performance
• Research and test potential methods to improve the precision of the existing AI solution for the extraction from unstructured data sources like images and PDF files.
• Collaborate with UNICEF ICTD to comply with all security and design guidelines, and to facilitate the deployment of the software components on the UNICEF Azure cloud and the integration with the UNICEF Entra ID single sign-on.

Terms of Reference / Key Deliverables:

Multi-lingual and translation support GIBD deployed on the UNICEF infrastructure with multi-lingual and translation support.

Deadline: 14 February 2025

Multiple numerical system support    GIBD deployed on the UNICEF infrastructure with multiple numerical system support.

Deadline: 17 March 2025

Use Azure OpenAI API for the program-area-specific classification system and COFOG classification            GIBD deployed on the UNICEF infrastructure with OpenAI implementation of the COFOG classification.

Deadline: 08 May 2025

Improve the current data-from-tables extraction process by implementing automation to merge rows and columns in those cases when the existing AI algorithm fails to identify the correct table structure. GIBD deployed on the UNICEF infrastructure with support to automate the process of merging rows and columns of the extracted tables.

Deadline: 30 June 2025

Integration with the UNICEF Consult tool for Data Validation, extended support for other program areas classification, multi-class COFOG classification. GIBD deployed on the UNICEF infrastructure with integration with Consult tool API.

Deadline: 20 August 2025

Introduce in G-IBD the support for the extraction of budget data from paragraphs and not just from tables.            GIBD deployed on the UNICEF infrastructure with support for the extraction of budget data from paragraphs.

Deadline: 15 October 2025

Documentation of GIBD, including deployment documents, user guide, and a description of all the supported datasets. Documentation produced    .

Deadline: 20 December 2025

 

Qualifications

Education:

Advanced university degree (Bachelors) in the area of Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, Information Technology or related degree.

 

Work experience:

Knowledge/Expertise/Skills required *: 

• At least 6 years of experience on projects based on Microsoft technology.
• Excellent knowledge of .Net 8 with web application development and REST APIs: C# language
• A minimum of six years of experience in SQL development
• Experience with data extraction from unstructured files, using Azure services like the Document Intelligence Service
• Experience with data pipelines, data cleaning, data harmonization implementation as .NET web applications.
• Experience with integrating Machine Learning and AI solution in a .NET web application (Azure Functions, OpenAI APIs, etc.)
• A minimum of two year of experience in Microsoft Azure Cloud deployment and integration with Entra ID
• Knowledge of OO software development methodologies, programming patterns, and best practices of development in a distributed environment
• Fluent in spoken and written English. Additional official UN working languages are a plus..

Requirements:

Completed profile in UNICEF’s e-Recruitment system and

– Upload copy of academic credentials

– Financial proposal that will include/ reflect :

• • the costs per each deliverable and the total lump-sum for the whole assignment (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference.
  • travel costs and daily subsistence allowance, if internationally recruited or travel is required as per TOR.
  • Any other estimated costs: visa, health insurance, and living costs as applicable.
  • Indicate your availability

– Any emergent / unforeseen duty travel and related expenses will be covered by UNICEF.

– At the time the contract is awarded, the selected candidate must have in place current health insurance coverage.

– Payment of professional fees will be based on submission of agreed satisfactory deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant.

U.S. Visa information:

With the exception of the US Citizens, G4 Visa and Green Card holders, should the selected candidate and his/her household members reside in the United States under a different visa, the consultant and his/her household members are required to change their visa status to G4, and the consultant’s household members (spouse) will require an Employment Authorization Card (EAD) to be able to work, even if he/she was authorized to work under the visa held prior to switching to G4.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF’s core values of Commitment, Diversity and Integrity and core competencies in Communication, Working with People and Drive for Results. View our competency framework at: Here

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

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 be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks: 

Individuals engaged under a consultancy will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants. Consultants are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.