Office/Unit/Project Description

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the United Nations Development System (UNDS) and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s policy work carried out at HQs, regional bureaus/hubs and country offices forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP invests in the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains and in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan.

The Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has corporate responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDP’s Strategic Plan. Together with the Crisis Bureau, BPPS forms the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of global experts and practitioners providing timely development advice, delivering support to Country Offices and programme countries in a coherent manner to connect countries to the world of knowledge, resources and networks of best practice they need to achieve development breakthroughs.

The Effectiveness Group in BPPS focuses on assisting UNDP and partners to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links results-based management and performance monitoring with more effective and new ways of working.  It seeks to do so by enabling UNDP and others to be more innovative, knowledge and data driven by identifying, testing, learning, sharing and institutionalizing what works, including through effective development cooperation, and higher quality UNDP programming.  It acts as a hub on all aspects of results-based management and development performance monitoring and analysis as well as a hub that identifies, collects, and share ideas on new and better ways of working across the UNDP network, social innovators, and the development community.

The Effectiveness Group in BPPS aims to deepen UNDP’s and the international community’s understanding of what works and what does not work in effecting development change at country level in UNDP’s Strategic Plan programme priority areas, and how this understanding can drive knowledge creation and dissemination, innovation and scaling up, and more productive partnerships.

Quality assurance is an essential element of UNDP’s programming to support the organization in meeting stakeholders’ expectations and achieving higher programmatic results.

Reporting to the Policy Specialist, Quality Programming, the Quality Assurance Specialist provides technical leadership and coordination of corporate programme and project quality assurance as well as support to corporate clearance of Country Programme Documents (CPDs).

Scope of Work 

The Specialist will perform the following duties and responsibilities:

Project Quality Compliance and Learning

• Facilitate the smooth execution of quality assurance of projects, including the Social and Environmental Screening Procedure, and other risk assessment tools in the corporate system (Quantum+).
• Contribute to the development and iterative improvement of digital risk assessment tools, and related dashboards, in collaboration with relative business owners.
• Prop up corporate oversight, including performing spot-checks of project quality assurance.
• Monitor compliance, analyze quality data, and provide reports and recommendations to enable organizational learning.
• Respond to queries and troubleshoots procedures providing timely feedback to COs and Regional Bureaux counterparts.
• Record feedback and use it to provide actionable recommendations for the iterative improvement of systems and procedures.
• Proactively seek users buy-in of policy, procedural, and systems innovations.
• Contribute to the development and upkeep of project quality assurance systems and supporting resources such as guidance and FAQs.
• Facilitate knowledge building and maintain/update online toolkits.
• Perform other duties as required.

Policy Compliance 

• Facilitate the review, and perform analysis for inputs to relevant documents, policies, and procedures.
• Facilitate preparation of briefs for senior management, perform research on topics as assigned, analyze information, and synthesize into clear summaries.
• Manage capacity building initiatives to improve compliance in the completion rate of project QA in HQs units, Regional Bureaus and Country Offices.
• Facilitate  the analysis of project quality assurance, and SES, data for reporting and learning.

Programme Quality Assurance and Clearance 

• Facilitate  the appraisal of Country Programme Documents (CPDs) and support Regional Bureaux and Country Offices through the CPD quality assurance and clearance processes.
• Facilitate the engagement with Regional Bureaux and Executive Board Secretariat focal points, supporting the timely submission of final CPDs and extensions submitted for the Executive Board for clearance.
• Support the execution of the CPD clearance mechanism, establish and communicate timelines, coax, and follow-up with counterparts for the timely submission of documents, and keep supporting document repositories up to date.
• Perform quality assurance and clearance of final CPD packages prior to submission to the Executive Board Secretariat
• Source and verify information on CPDs to maintain up to date and issue the Joint Update of UNDP and UNFPA for Member States.
• Keep up to date the corporate records of CPDs and extensions, review, and record CPDs quality assurance scores and Web site.
• The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization

Institutional Arrangement

Supporting several different risk management related work across the BPPS/Effectiveness Group, this role reports to the Policy Specialist for Quality Programming, collaborates closely with the rest of the Quality Programming Team, including the Social and Environmental Standards Team on SES-related items.

Competencies

Please refer to the competency framework site for the entire list of competencies and further explanations.

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

Minimum Qualifications 

Min. Academic Education

• Advanced university degree (master’s degree or equivalent) in Social Policy, Public Policy, Politics, Economics, Development Studies, or related fields is required. Or
• First-level university degree (bachelor’s degree) in the above-mentioned fields, combined with an additional 2 years of qualifying experience, will be considered in lieu of a master’s degree.

Min. years of relevant Work experience 

Minimum of 5 years (with a master’s degree) or 7 years (with a bachelor’s degree) of progressive experience in policy or program management and support at HQs, regional, or country contexts.

Required skills and competencies

• Experience in programme and/or project quality assurance;
• Experience in change management and in promoting adoption of initiatives that involve the buy-in of multiple, diverse stakeholders;
• Experience with developing guidance, training materials, designing tools, and drafting communication material;

Desired additional skills and competencies

• Experience in implementing social & environmental policy and safeguards;
• Previous experience working with international, multi‐stakeholder processes or initiatives;
• Experience in developing and delivering webinars or learning modules;
• Familiarity with UN/UNDP programming and policies

Required Language(s) (at working level)

• Fluency in written and spoken English is required;
• Working knowledge of one other official UN language would be an asset.

Annexes

• UNDP Enterprise Risk Management: https://info.undp.org/sites/ERM/SitePages/Home.aspx
• UNDP Policy for Due Diligence and Partnership with Private Sector; https://popp.undp.org/policy-page/private-sector-partnerships
• UNDP Social and Environmental Standards: https://www.undp.org/accountability/social-and-environmental-responsibility/social-and-environmental-standards