Consultancy: Software Engineer for Data Driven Systems supporting the South Sudan Country Office

The UNICEF South Sudan is looking for an innovative and dedicated software engineer for Data Driven Systems in support of its Country Programme

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.

The consultant is required to work off-site and communicate with the SSPME team via email or Skype.

Background:
The people of South Sudan suffered decades of conflict before Independence in 2011. When a new civil war began in December 2013, South Sudan had only nascent government institutions and some of the lowest development indicators in the world. To date, this conflict has displaced over two million people, 1.5 million of whom remain displaced inside the country. After many rounds of political negotiations and setbacks between the warring parties, there is little hope of a resolution to the conflict in the near term. The conflict in South Sudan is highly complex, with constantly shifting frontlines, varying accessibility and multiple displacements of affected populations.

In this complex environment, UNICEF is providing lifesaving basic social services through implementing partners, but also through direct implementation in hard to reach communities with Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) missions which deploy technical experts to assess and directly respond to the situation on the ground. In 2016, the UNICEF South Sudan country Office (SSCO) reached over 1.2 million conflict-affected children with multi sectoral, lifesaving services including immunization, therapeutic feeding, water, sanitation, hygiene promotion, education and protection.

Within the SSCO, the SPPME section focuses on (i) delivering results in evidence generation, analysis, policy dialogue and advocacy, (ii) building social protection capacities and (iii) developing capacities in social inclusion and the mainstreaming of gender equality and girls/women empowerment in the SSCO programs and in UNICEF’s support to government. It further seeks to better understand and address the key risks faced by the Country Program by developing collaborations with other agencies and making better use of UNICEF’s and partners capacities to produce data that can feed common analytical work.

Objective:
In order to maintain a high level of awareness of the rapidly evolving situations, their impacts on children and women, and their implications in terms of the SSCO’s ability to deliver on our mandate, and to support an eventual move from emergency support to recovery, stabilization, and resilience, the SSPME team has begun making full use of existing data already collected at all levels (partners, field offices, clusters, support to government through sectoral information systems—e.g., in nutrition, health, education) in both development and humanitarian activities. As such, the SSPME is working at streamlining information across sectors, and deploying systems and tools to facilitate presentation and visualization of real-time information on programme implementation, staff safety, quality assurance and reporting, as well as on the situation of children and women, and to contribute to detecting and timely acting upon risks of mass atrocities.

The SSPME has identified and began establishing the following data-driven tools and systems for real-time monitoring, evaluation and planning purposes within UNICEF South Sudan:
• Field Monitoring Database: To effectively respond to programmatic emergencies on the ground, SSPME at UNICEF is transforming its manual Field Monitoring Database into a real-time streamlined data-driven system that helps improve data collection processes, analyze access constraints, trends, and recommend action points to UNICEF’s development and humanitarian operations across the country. The information entered in the form will become available live on the dashboard, without any import/export steps. This way UNCIEF ensures partners meet standards for support, and meet the emergency needs on the ground on a timely manner. The FMD also helps UNICEF ensure accountability for programming.
• Operations Crisis Response Mechanism: Create a web-based system to support the data entry workflow for the Operations and Human Resources teams to effectively respond to emerging safety and security crisis as it related to its staff safety. The system will allow the operations team to be aware of the staffs’ whereabouts real-time during crisis. The SSPME is working to improve the data collection processes and automate of the data entry workflow for each staff member. The database will help generate a ready deployable dashboard to effectively digest and view staff's location and other information to quickly respond and address emergent needs.
• Integrated Food Security Classification: To ensure the UNCIEF management team and staff are aware at all times on the state of the food security of beneficiaries so they can properly respond to their needs, the SSPME team will streamline the data collected to report the Integrated Food Security Classification on a monthly basis and convert them into an dashboard which will allows for the interactive visualization of information by geography (Region, State, County, Payam), timeline (monthly, quarterly, annually), population distribution, and types of crisis and individuals impacted.
• The Loss and Fraud Database: To ensure greater transparency and accountability to donors, SSPME has undertaken the initiative to improve its tools and system for reporting fraud and losses by field offices and partner organizations throughout the country. Some of the information is being kept in soft copy, within emails and consequently being lost. The SSPME has developed a methodology to streamline the incoming information, improve the database structure, enhance the data collection processes, and develop a dashboard for easy to digest information and track status/progress on each case of Fraud or Loss.
• Programme Monitoring Performance - Country Indicators - There is not one streamlined database with all the information stored in one place, and accessible across the office. Currently, data collection, management, and data repository are not streamlined, mainly falling within the responsibility of Information Managers (IM) of each sector, who collect and organize the information on an ad hoc basis, store them in individual computers, serving cross-thematic sectors and the management team only for the duration of their individual contracts. SPPME is working to streamline the Programme Monitoring Performance - Country Indicators for the UNICEF South Sudan Office, establish a central repository, and ensure accessibility across programmatic and thematic groups within UNICEF.
• Monthly Score Card: Develop a user-friendly visualization dashboard with the financial data pertaining to UNICEF South Sudan Country Office. The Monthly Score card is produced automatically using internal data collection and storage tools. The dashboard currently is managed and presented in several excel sheets, and displayed separately in terms of categories, geography and timeline. The SSPME aims to make it more digestible and visual in terms of the mentioned attributes.

Deliverables and Timelines
In this context, to effectively deploy, test, and streamline these tools, the SSPME has identified Keshif - a state-of-the-art technology for exploratory data analysis and visualizations platform that quickly transforms datasets into effective, rich and visually interactive dashboards. As such, the SSPME requires a technical support for a Keshif software development specialist to ensure and provide back-end software, integration and mapping services to ensure implementation of live dashboards can work seamlessly and live without the need to manually import or export datasets. As such, the SSPME is seeking a consultant through a long-term agreement to provide services for up to 35 days within a period of six months to deliver the following outputs that facilitate the implementation of the above-mentioned list of datasets and dashboards:

Deploy at least six dashboards related to the above listed tools currently being developed by SSPME, and ensure their deployment incorporates the following:

Deliverables for the Field Monitoring Database: (9 Days)
First phase: (6 Days)
- Initial dashboards for visualizing survey responses using the Keshif software in customized web pages –including one dashboard per each programme, and one dashboard for action points;
- Integration with Kobo Toolbox REST API for automated data retrieval, avoiding import/export steps.
- Maps of State and county variables, available as separate charts;
- Display of lat-long (point location) information on an interactive map – each response as a single point.
- Generating shape files for 3 country regions, using state boundaries, to display aggregated data per region on a map

Second phase (3 Days)
- Improvements to dashboards based on feedback under use;
- Implementation of sharing and privacy settings for Kobo integrations (on the explore.keshif.me platform, applicable for use in future surveys).
- Implementation of feature for hierarchical display of questions of the survey.
- Design and implementation of a dynamic maps that reveal regional, state and county information based on zooming level;
- Design and implementation of point clustering (aggregation) options on the map chart to show and interact with point locations effectively when data is large and markers are too many,;

Deliverables for the Operations Crisis Response Mechanism: (8 Days)
First phase: (5 Days)
- Implementing data acquisition strategy (potentially using Kobo);
- Early dashboard (a custom-built secure webpage) to display all logged information, with the ability to filter per person, per time, per location, and other information;
- Display of lat-long (point location) information on an interactive map – each log to a single point.

Second phase (3 Days)
- Implementing data acquisition using SMS (potentially with Rapid Pro);
- Implementing a filter to show the last logged location for all individuals logged;
- Designing and implementing visualization of connected traces of logs for individuals.

Deliverables for the Integrated Food Security Classification: (4 Days)
First phase (3 Days)
- Collecting, assessment of available data, in terms of richness, granularity, and consistency, through time (months/seasons/years), geography (state/county) and theme;
- Preparation of transformed data for suitable visual display and exploration.

Second phase (1 Days)
- Preparing dashboards based on states and/or counties to show trends in food security per population over time and location, using available data.

Deliverable for the Loss and Fraud Database: (3 Days)
First phase (1 Day)
- Early dashboard with combined data of the Loss and Fraud database, including state/county map, with secure privacy setting;

Second phase (2 Days)
- Separating dashboards for Fraud cases from Loss cases.
- Live integrations to Sharepoint to connect to in-use data sources.
- Potential integration of dashboards into explore.keshif.me platform, including detection of privacy and sharing settings from Sharepoint automatically (will require subscription to Keshif for private use).

Deliverables for the Programme Monitoring Performance - Country Indicators: (4 Days)
First phase (3 Days)
- Data acquisition: set up a a data bank/repository for easy storying and access of different (granular) levels of data
- Early dashboard with aggregate data for all sectors;

Second phase (1 Days)
- Improvements to dashboards based on feedback under use;
- Providing support for data maintenance activities;

Deliverables for the Monthly Score Card: (6 Days)
First phase (5 Days)
- Design and technical implementation of visualizing collected data to reveal project and metrics;
- This might be done using an existing tool (such as PowerBI) – which may require further subscription for access, or as a custom web-based development using HTML, JavaScript, CSS and D3 technologies.

Second phase (2 Days)
- Improvements to dashboards based on feedback under use;
- Integration with UNCIEF internal database warehouse.

The above deliverables will incorporate one or more of the following integrations:

KOBO Toolbox Integration: In-sync integration between Keshif Dashboard Platform with Kobo Toolbox's existing REST APIs, so that new forms can be easily visualized, live data is retrieved, and shared. Keshif will process JSON responses of form responses and metadata to generate appropriate live dashboards for SSPME;

Dynamic maps: that reveal regional, state and county information based on zooming (view) level or allowing manually switching, such that viewing all country would reveal regions, zooming in further reveals states, and further zooming in reveals counties and shows data aggregated per each region, state and county accordingly;

Mapbox integration to explore.keshif.me platform, such that new datasets imported automatically per the platform features will allow inserting South Sudan regional maps from map data hosted at Mapbox platform, also allowing for future changes and maintenance by UNICEF staff.

Communication and collaboration:
• At least bi-weekly communication and status updates
• Working with the SSPME staff to identify key takeaways and highlights of the data, and strategies for external communication.

Timeframe – Each dashboard and integration will require between five - six days to implement. The deliverables require 35 days of work in total, and should be completed within a period of one year.

Payments – will be made to the consultant on a monthly basis per days worked for the completion of deliverables noted above.

Qualifications
- Eight years of experience in web application development, data analytics and data communication;
- Extensive knowledge of the Keshif Platform technology;
- Experience in developing data back-end services and data architectures; and
- Experience in using data query languages and statistical tools;
- Research, design, and development experience in data visualization and interactive web interfaces;
- Published peer-reviewed articles in recognized journals and conferences;
- Experience in working with a wide range of data analytics domains, including public and open data platforms; and in usability testing and design studies.

Please indicate your ability, availability and daily/monthly rate (in US$) to undertake the terms of reference above (including travel and daily subsistence allowance, if applicable).  Applications submitted without a daily/monthly rate will not be considered.

UNICEF is committed to diversity and inclusion within its workforce, and encourages qualified female and male candidates from all national, religious and ethnic backgrounds, including persons living with disabilities, to apply to become a part of our organisation.