Evaluation Specialist, P-4 at UNICEF

Job Number: 514505
Work Type: Fixed Term Staff

Brief country context

• Nigeria is a populous country with extremely diverse cultural, demographic and development profiles.  The country combines both development and emergency context as there is an ongoing major humanitarian operation in the conflict prone North East.  Economically, the country presents huge potential for leveraging domestic resources (from both public and private sectors) for child-centered development.  Within its capital, Abuja, it hosts the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and a large number of development partners.
• The UNICEF Nigeria Office is one of the largest UNICEF Country Offices and has a staffing complement of almost 400 staff. The office is also supported by approximately 130 consultants at any given time.  Staff and consultants are located in the national office (Abuja) and nine field offices, some of which are the size of a small country office with 30 - 40 staff members. The Human Resources unit is centralized in Abuja, serving all the staff and consultants as necessary.

Country Typology:

• Country Income Level: Nigeria is a lower middle income country.
• Duty Station: Abuja is a “C” family, and non- emergency duty station.
• Office Size: (375 established positions, 9 Field Offices plus a country office)
• Annual Budget: (USD296,200,000)
• Schooling: international schools available, covering different curriculums (British, American and French)

How can you make a difference?
To ensure that the UNICEF Country Office has useful, valid and reliable information on:

• The situation of children’s and women’s rights;
• The performance of UNICEF-supported programmes including their relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability, and in emergency contexts, their coverage, coordination and coherence.  
• To work within the UN country team to support UNCT goals for delivering valid and reliable information on the attainment of the MDGs and other goals, and on the performance of UN-supported programmes
• To assist in the establishment of evaluation tools which enhance partnership between the UNCT, government and other key players to collectively track progress on MDGs and other international commitment for children.
• To assist in the development of national capacities for evaluation and research, with special attention to the interest, concern and participation of government, community, and civil society stakeholders.  

Key End-Results

• Evaluation & Research Planning. The Country Office and national partners have a well-prioritised and realistic plan of research and evaluation activities, developed collaboratively that provides all the relevant and strategic information needed to manage the Country Programme.
• Evaluation.  UNICEF-supported evaluations attain established UN quality standards, and the results are disseminated in a timely fashion to stakeholders for improving programme performance and contributing to national and corporate learning.
• Evaluation Capacity Building. The evaluation capacities of Country Office staff and national partners – government and civil society - enhanced with the contribution of UNICEF knowledge partners meet the expectations and requirements of their positions and responsibilities.
• Coordination and Networking. The UNICEF office is linked to wider UNICEF Evaluation developments in way that both contributes to and benefits from organizational learning on effective Evaluation management.

Key Accountabilities and Duties & Tasks
Integrated Evaluation Plan:

• Ensure that the Country Office and national partners use a well-prioritised and realistic plan of research and evaluation activities that will provide the most relevant and strategic information to manage the Country Programme, including tracking and assessing UNICEF’s distinct contribution.

Duties & Tasks:

• Make professional contributions to and provide technical assistance for evaluation and establishing the major evaluation objectives, priorities, and activities in UNICEF’s multi-year and annual IMEPs, in consultation with child-rights and implementing partners.
• Likewise, support the development of UNDAF Evaluation Plans from a sound results-based programming process.
• Identify the Evaluation objectives, priorities, and activities required for effective CO and partner Emergency Preparedness and Response Plans,
• In humanitarian response situations, draft and recommend set-ups that will enable effective evaluation of the response.  
• After the initial humanitarian response, support management of the medium-term response with a revised  IMEP.

Evaluation:

• Ensure that UNICEF-supported evaluations are designed and implemented to established UN quality standards, and the results are disseminated in a timely fashion to stakeholders in order to improve programme performance and contribute to wider learning.

 Duties & Tasks:

• Technically support programme partners to formulate Terms of Reference and evaluation designs of high quality, when relevant drawing on the know-how of knowledge institutions, in compliance with the organizations programme evaluation policies and guidelines.
• 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.
• Disseminate evaluation findings and recommendations to the intended audiences in user-friendly methods.  In particular, to ensure that effective participatory feedback is provided to community and civil society stakeholders.
• Monitor and ensure that a management response to the findings and recommendations of the evaluation is completed, recorded, and followed up for implementation.  Most specifically, ensure that evaluation recommendations are submitted to the Country Management Team and follow-up actions recorded in CMT minutes.
• Submit electronic copies of all evaluations to NYHQ via the Evaluation Data Base web portal, with full accompanying documentation.

Evaluation Capacity Building:

• Ensure that the Evaluation capacities of Country Office staff and national partners – government and civil society - are strengthened enabling them to increasingly engage in and lead evaluation processes.

Duties & Tasks:

• Promote the awareness and understanding of the shared responsibility of Evaluation function among all staff members through communication, training, learning and development activities organization-wide.
• In close collaboration with partners, ensure that an Evaluation capacity building strategy for UNICEF/UN staff national partners and institutions exists in the context of the IMEP, or UNDAF Evaluation plan.  Pay particular attention so the capacity needs of national partners such as professional evaluation associations will be strengthened by involvement in evaluation processes and possibly through specific capacity building initiatives.
• Collaborate to implement capacity building strategies as a joint commitment with other developmental partners. Utilize a range of appropriate skills building strategies including self-learning, seminars and workshops and practical experience in order that UNICEF and UN staff have the basic knowledge and skills in understanding and applying new Evaluation policies, tools, methods to fulfil their responsibilities. Similarly, design and implement strategies suited to the skills needs of national partners.
• Actively seek partnerships with knowledge institutions for the identification of capacity gaps and development of strategies to address them.

Coordination and Networking:

• Ensure that the UNICEF office is effectively linked to wider UNICEF Evaluation developments in a way that both contributes to and benefits from organizational learning on effective Evaluation management.

Duties & Tasks

• Collaborate with Regional Evaluation Advisers and HQ Evaluation Office for overall coordination of priority research and evaluation activities, especially those of regional scope requiring the coordinated effort of multiple countries.
• Partner with the Regional Evaluation Adviser to ensure that current and accurate Evaluation data and results are included in regional reports, multi-country studies, and knowledge sharing networks.
• Undertake lessons-learned reviews on successful and unsuccessful Evaluation practices and experience at the national level, and ensure they are shared as appropriate. Similarly, pay attention to Evaluation knowledge networks to identify innovations and lessons learned that may be relevant for the CO and partners to improve their Evaluation function.
• To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have…

Qualifications
Education:

• Advanced University Degree in Social Sciences, Statistics, Planning Development, Planning

Work Experience:

• Professional work experience in evaluation activities as follows:
  • Eight years of relevant professional work experience. Developing country work experience (for IP) or field work experience (for NO)
  • At least one instance of exposure to emergency programming, including humanitarian response-focused evaluations.

Language Proficiency:

• Fluency in English and another UN language. Fluency in the national language of the duty station an asset.