The Country Programme Advisor leads and manages the work of a group of Professional and support staff in the Bangkok Regional Hub which serves as the principal point of contact for a group of Country Offices with regional and HQ teams. S/He leads the provision of the Regional Bureau’s day-to-day advice to COs and ensures coordinated support to their activities, including but not limited to programme and management-related matters from a corporate perspective, planning, monitoring and reporting, and troubleshooting; in doing so s/he interacts closely with the Regional Hub’s policy teams, operations, partnerships, and the Regional Hub leadership. The Advisor also works closely with management partners in relevant HQ units to ensure strategic coherence, effective, and appropriately prioritized support to COs. S/He proactively engages with the COs to plan the provision of policy & programme advisory services, including in crisis situations. S/He facilitates alignment and linkage with regional and corporate strategy and priorities, monitors CO performance against corporate standards and agreed results commitments between the CO and the RBx and escalates performance issues to the Bureau leadership as needed.

S/He reports to the Director, Bangkok Regional Hub.

1. Ensures targeted and aligned CO portfolio management support, including crisis, by:

• Leading the team’s guidance and support to a wide variety of CO programmes and proactively engaging with COs, focusing particularly on those with complex and large country programmes, in order to better align programming against corporate and regional priorities, offering knowledge from other country programmes, evaluations, performance analytics, and other available sources of lessons learned;
• Guiding and assessing the appropriateness and effectiveness of COs’ planning process for advisory support, working with policy teams to offer a joint portfolio of available knowledge and resources, and recommending additional areas for technical and programmatic support to the COs;
• Deciding on the prioritization of competing and complex CO requests for policy and programme management support, including (a) assessing appropriateness of TORs for technical and programmatic support, particularly in complex and crisis situations, against economic and social development needs of the CO or sub-region, and strategic imperatives, bringing country/regional knowledge and working closely with BPPS and other Central Bureaux, (b) helping COs resolve HQ or regional-level bottlenecks impinging on CO’s performance or compliance with corporate requirements; and (c) liaising with Central Bureau or RB leadership as needed;
• Leading the provision of CO support by (a) working closely with the Regional Advisors, BPPS and CRU to coordinate response, liaising closely with the COs to monitor emerging, existing, and evolving situations, and recommending and influencing the package of required support; (b) regularly monitoring data on country programme and project performance and advising RBx management; (c) providing analysis of the changing situation, evaluating implications for ongoing programming and offering recommendations for action in briefing notes on country-level situations with up to date information for HQ meetings; and (d) overseeing coordination of  support to COs; 
• Identifying areas for joint multi-country programming and formulating new projects and activities in the sub-region, initiating approaches to other organizations for the acceptance, funding and implementation of such activities; and
• Providing substantial analysis and recommendations on all programmatic and service delivery CO issues to Regional Bureau leadership and/or ExO in order to assist corporate and regional decision-making and contributing to strategic formulation.

2. Enhances CO programme planning by:

• Supporting COs programme planning, including (a) guiding the formulation of the UNDAF/equivalent and of the country programme by proposing newly developed methods and concepts  that help ensure the relevance of UNDP’s support to national development priorities, including in crisis countries; (b) performing  quality assurance of CO programme planning in alignment with corporate and regional priorities, providing revisions  and recommendations; (c) briefing Regional Advisors and Bureau leadership ahead of the HQ PAC; (d) providing support towards authorization of direct implementation where required; (e) quality assuring results management frameworks, programme monitoring plans, and the CPD ensuring adequate budgeting and good practice for the conduct of decentralized evaluation throughout the programme cycle, including management response, dissemination, and lessons learned;
• Leading the alignment/linkage between CO programmes and projects with regional and corporate strategy and priorities by advising CO leadership team on the Bureau’s newly developed policies and priorities, advising on sub-regional trends, and providing first level of oversight of compliance with corporate programme management standards; and
• Guiding and reviewing CO IWP and evaluation workplan elaboration process to align them with corporate, operational and programmatic standards, conducting field missions, providing advice to CO leadership and first level of quality assurance before approval by the Bureau.

3. Enhances CO monitoring, risk management and reporting activities by:

• Quality assuring CO monitoring and evaluation framework / approach by providing technical advice on reliable, measureable and sustainable indicators, sharing evaluation, monitoring and oversight tools and drawing on support of the Results Based Management (RBM) specialist;
• Supervising the team’s monitoring of CO progress against IWP and evaluation workplan, intervening to resolve difficulties, identify risks for escalation and formulate recommendations to improve results tracking, RBM based programming, and adjustments to programme delivery; advocating and assisting with usage of evidence and data collected against relevant SP/IRRF, CPD, and IWP indicators and targets;
• In close coordination with the Regional Hub Operations team, monitoring CO operational, financial performance and efficiency, and timely implementation of audit recommendations, particularly for high risk CO and crisis countries, intervening as needed to resolve operational bottlenecks and to recommend strategies and processes to improve support to COs; and reviewing all CO managerial performance information to facilitate effective and efficient corporate oversight functions;
• Monitoring CO risks and mitigation/escalation plans using the IRRF platform and escalating to the Regional Bureau leadership as needed;
• Promoting integration of lessons learned from country programmes into formulating and disseminating of best practices within regional and HQ teams; and
• Guiding COs in their ROARS by sharing corporate guidance and providing first level of quality assurance of CO ROAR before their approval by the Bureau.

4. Enhancing knowledge management support for external relationship and partnerships by:

• Identifying new institutional/strategic partnership opportunities for the sub-region and COs, integrate and represent the RBx and COs in external forums;
• Guiding the COs’ and sub-region’s resource mobilization strategy, identifying new sources of funding and developing new approaches for UNDP to leverage funds within the CO portfolio, sub-region and region; and
• Identifying new themes and development issues for knowledge products in close coordination with BPPS, CRU and the Strategic Advisor by sharing information and data from specific projects, targeted interventions in crisis countries and lessons learned exercises and by leveraging deep subject matter, country and regional expertise.

5. Ensures integrity and effectiveness in the management of the team by:

• Providing strategic guidance and overseeing the resources management of the team including human resources leadership, motivation and learning activities to ensure adherence to policies and procedures and the accountability framework;
• In consultations with peers and RPPS establishing the team’s annual work plans and setting objectives, performance measurements, standards and expected results in collaboration with his/her supervisor;
• Supervising and assessing work in progress to ensure delivery of results according to performance standards, overall objectives and accountability framework.  Providing intellectual leadership and technical guidance and timely taking of decisions to meet objectives, escalating to the supervisor as needed; and
• Promoting teamwork to facilitate harmonization, linkages, collaboration and synergy and to ensure staff members are provided sufficient information, guidance and support to perform and deliver results according to organizational and professional standards of efficiency, accountability and integrity.

Education:

Master's degree in Economics, International Relations, Political Science or other social science related field.

Experience:

• At least ten years of progressively responsible work experience in advisory service required
• Experience as part of senior management team in a UNDP Country Office setting is desirable.

Language Requirements:

Proficiency in English. Working knowledge of other UN language desirable 

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