Consultancy for Data Privacy and Protection Expert, Geneva, Switzerland

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.

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.

Background of the Consultancy

In 2016, UNICEF published the two volume series on Education Participation, which featured practical guidance to improve monitoring systems to identify out-of-school children and children at risk of dropping out and to design prevention, intervention and compensation responses. The guidance is based on numerous in-country visits within the CEE-CIS region and beyond to identify the main barriers and solutions to the range of issues related to education monitoring systems. As Ministries of Education in the region increasingly adopt electronic, child-level record systems, a range of important new issues arise related to data protection and privacy of data on children. While Monitoring Education Participation acknowledges several of these instances and provides some guidance – a more comprehensive, legal guidance is needed to help countries who encounter these issues. Therefore, the CEE/CIS Regional Office Education and Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation Sections are looking for an expert consultant on data protection and privacy for children to develop a targeted research brief on these issues, and a short summary brief as a complement to Monitoring Education Participation.
Recent trends and developments important to this brief include:

• Increased amount of data collected on children, in schools and other children services (health, social services, juvenile justice services etc.), including sensitive and biometric data.
• Technology makes the storage and transmission of data easier, creating additional potential for the breach or loss of data.
• The security of electronic data has become a worldwide concern for countries and citizens. The impact of data loss or data published on individuals can be severe and put children at risk.
• Government departments and services are increasingly interconnected and are encouraged to work and provide services in an integrated and coordinated manner, which has implications for how data (not only digital data, but information on children generally) is used, transmitted and shared.

Key issues to be developed in the brief:

The main deliverable of the expert consultant is a 20-30 page research brief which would outline the key provisions and guidelines based on international standards and practice concerning the protection of personal data and sharing or exchange of sectoral administrative data (including electronically) between agencies and professionals working with children. The report would include an annex with two parts: first, a list of references in the Annex to key documents, international acts on data protection, etc. for further reading; second, it would reference any best practice tools, such as MoUs, laws, or data protection guidelines, identified by the consultant. The research report would then be abridged by the consultant into a short companion brief to the UNICEF Series on Education Participation, and an overview PPT would be produced.

The research brief should provide legal and technical guidance, illustrated by a few best practice country examples where relevant, on the following topics:

A. General considerations:

1. Key definitions (“personal data”, “sensitive personal data”, “biometric data”, protection of data (from breach, from loss …), data privacy, data ownership, confidentiality, anonymization, informed consent, etc.)

2. A summary of the main international guidelines in terms of protection of paper-based and digital personal children data and sharing or exchange of such data between professionals and across services and institutions (this should cover issues of entry, storage, access, privacy and transmission). Specifically regarding the shift from paper based to electronic records: what legal provisions should be in place to ensure the security and protect the privacy of personal data on children? What are the key legal and ethical issues issues around ownership of data on children and data access – including a consideration of the potential harms and benefits of collecting information on children?

3. A summary of key issues related to the creation, use and exchange of personal identifiers (personal number, birth certificate number, passport number, social insurance number, tax number, student ID and other types of commonly used IDs).

4. Disaggregation and guidelines around publication of disaggregated data

B. Guidelines/best practices concerning specific domains of health, education, social protection, emergencies:

1. The use, exchange and protection of specific types of personal data by a range of institutions working with children (schools, social services, clinics, municipalities, local authorities) including “sensitive personal data” (paper and digital): health, disability and special needs, financial support / social benefits, ethnicity, religion, criminal history, etc.

2. Use and exchange of data within schools, institutions, clinics, social services and other settings where different roles and levels of access to personal data need to be considered (e.g., principal, teachers, doctor, psychologists, social worker, case managers, local education authority officer, inspectors, etc.)

3. The characteristics of the most common data protection legislation and the legal provision for data protection and data sharing, particularly relating to child data, in times of emergency (e.g. natural disasters, terrorist-related action and conflict).

C. Guidelines/best practices concerning data sharing and information flows: horizontal and vertical

1. Vertical information exchange of personal data, such as from schools / clinics / social workers or case managers to regional or national bodies (Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, and regional and district departments), and vice versa from district/regional/national to local level.

2. Horizontal information exchange of personal data between institutions / committees / bodies at the local level, professionals working with children, e.g. between schools, between clinics, between schools and clinics, between schools and social workers, between schools and inter-disciplinary committees supporting children in difficult situations, between schools and municipalities/local authorities, schools and the police/judiciary., within a case management team, a dropout prevention team, etc.

3. Horizontal information exchange of personal data at regional or national level between Ministries or government agencies (examples from the region to be provided to consultant), e.g. between health information management systems and education management information systems, between education management information systems and border police information systems, between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Interior, or the Ministry of Justice, etc.

4. The development of information sharing agreements or MoUs and administrative and technical procedures in relation to the above.

5. Dissemination of data to the public, or specific sub-groups such as parents or civil servants.

Scope and timeline:

Expected length: The research report would be approximately 20-30 pages, excluding annexes. The abridged companion brief to the UNICEF Series on Education Participation would be approximately 8-10 pages. The PowerPoint presentation would be approximately 15 slides.

Supervision and collaboration: The deliverable will be prepared under the overall supervision of the CEE/CIS Senior Regional Education Advisor, in close collaboration with the Regional M&E Advisor, as well as the Regional Education Specialist, the Regional Out-of-School Children Data Consultant and the Regional Out-of-School Children Policy Consultant.

Timeline: The consultancy will be for 20 working days between 15 August and 30 November 2017.

Expected deliverable:

• A first draft of the research brief submitted by 15 September, 2017.
• Comments integrated and revised version of the report and PPT submitted by 15 October, 2017, for validation and feedback at the TransMonEE meeting in 25-26 October, 2017.
• Final research report and summary brief submitted by 15 November, 2017.

Intended audience:

UNICEF staff working on issues related to administrative data systems or the collection and use of child-level data in sector or intersectoral programmes would be the primary audience of this research report. The audience of the abridged Education companion brief would be UNICEF Education staff and government decision makers and technical staff, specifically those implementing or otherwise facilitating the move towards the digitisation of personal records and the (increased) sharing and exchange of information between government agencies and local institutions and schools. The intended audience of the PowerPoint presentation would be both internal and external (government) education and M&E specialists; the PPT will be presented at the upcoming TransMonEE meeting in Athens 25-26 October, 2017 during the workshop on ethics and data on children.

Location of consultancy:

The consultancy will be home based with no anticipated travel. Should there be need for travel during the course of the consultancy, this will be agreed upon with UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS and the consultant.

Required qualifications:

• Advanced university degree in Law [Required]
• Significant knowledge and expertise in the areas of data on children, particularly ethics, the protection of personal data, data privacy and data exchange, both legal and technical aspects, as well as thorough knowledge of international legislation and best practices; [Required]
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with demonstrated ability to deliver high-quality written work in the English language; [Required]
• Prior experience providing legal and technical advice to government agencies concerning protection of personal data; [Advantageous]
• Familiarity with the work of UNICEF and/or other similar UN organizations or development agencies; [Advantageous]
• Familiarity with legislation on protection of personal data in the CEE/CIS region; [Advantageous]

To Apply: Interested candidates are requested to submit their Expression of Interest, Curriculum Vitae and UNP11 by July 26 2017 indicating their daily fee for this assignment in USD, CHF or EUR. An expression of interest without mentioning the fee would not be considered for further process.