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Asst Info Management Officer (Data curator) - Temporary Appointment

Beirut

  • Organization: UNHCR - United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
  • Location: Beirut
  • Grade: Level not specified - Level not specified
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Statistics
    • Information Technology and Computer Science
    • Culture and Sport
  • Closing Date: Closed

This Job Opening is available to eligible UNHCR staff members and external applicants. All applicants for NPO positions must possess at least a first university degree from an accredited institution.

Academic, professional references in respect of  NPO positions are checked by Admin/HR staff in the field.

Applicants should be nationals of the country.

General Service staff with six consecutive years of UNHCR service since appointment, at the G-6 level and above at the time of application, but without a university degree, are eligible to apply for vacant NOA positions only.

NPO applicants must be fully proficient in the official UN working language of the duty station and in at least one official language of the country in which they are to serve. Assistant Information Management Officer

ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT.

The Assistant Information Management Officer assists in the production and dissemination of information on the population of concern, including but not limited to Protection and Programme information.

The incumbent operationalizes data standards developed at the central level in field operations, compile data and analyse information from all populations of concern. S/he supports the Programme Team and UNHCR's implementing partners in the choice of indicators for monitoring to be included in sub-agreements as well as the Protection Team in operationalizing protection monitoring systems.
FUNCTIONAL STATEMENT

Accountability

- The Office delivers reliable, accessible and user-friendly, relevant, predictable, appropriate and timely information. 
- Global data standards, and where appropriate, the establishment of country-specific common data standards are adopted by UNHCR and its partners.

Responsibility

- Operationalize country-specific common data standards and promote them with partners.
- Compile, aggregrate and analyze data and information elements required to produce standardized information products and implement data/information collection plans for baseline and context-specific data. 
- Support the operation in the analysis of processed data and information and perform data quality and consistency control.
- Facilitate the analysis of cross-border information between relevant countries.
- Support and leverage geographic data for map production and use in geographic information systems (GIS).
- Share UNHCR data with partner agencies and maintain Portal population figures in-line with aggreed frequencies.
- Provide technical Information Management support to Needs Assessment processes, specifically in data collection, processing/collation and analysis.
- Perform other duties as required.

Authority

- Liaise with partners and represent UNHCR in meetings related to the functions.
- Make recommendations and provide advice on the technical information management requirements.

ESSENTIAL MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE REQUIRED
- Undergraduate degree (equivalent of a BA/BS) in information technology, demography, statistics, social sciences or any related area.
- At least 1 year of relevant work experience.
- Knowledge of the UN system and the humanitarian community.
- Proven skills to analyse statistical information.
- Advanced Excel skills (e.g. pivot tables, functions, etc.).
- Ability to formulate IM-related technical requirements and Operating Procedures.
- Experience with handling confidential data and demonstrated understanding of different data collection methodologies.
- Excellent knowledge of English and UN working language of the duty station if not English.


***For National Officer positions, very good knowledge of local language and local institutions is essential.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS & COMPETENCIES
- Successful participation in the Operational Data management Learning Programme is desirable.
- Experience in web design and software development is an asset.
- Experience with relevant software such as ArcGIS, Mapinfo, SPSS, EpiInfo6, SQL Server, and/or proGres is desirable.
- Experience with HTML, PHP, ASP and/or Java is an asset.
- Knowledge of additional UN languages.

This is a Standard Job Description for all UNHCR Assistant Information Management Officer positions. The Operational Context may contain additional essential and/or desirable qualifications relating to the specific operation and/or position. Any such requirements are incorporated by reference in this Job Description and will be considered for the screening, shortlisting and selection of candidates Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.  Shortlisted candidates may be required to sit for written test and/or oral interview.

UNHCR is committed to diversity and welcomes applications from qualified candidates regardless of disability, gender identity, marital or civil partnership status, race, color or ethnic and national origins, religion or belief, or sexual orientation. UNHCR has a ZERO TOLERANCE policy on sexual exploitation and abuse, and sexual harassment. Successful candidates will be subject to mandatory UN Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and Sexual Harassment clearance check prior to receiving an offer. UNHCR does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview meeting, processing, training or any other fees). All applications will be treated with the strictest confidentiality.
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See below for this postion's Operational Context
======================================================================================================== UNHCR operations have several data collection activities that fall outside of UNHCR corporate data systems.  While the analytical products may be retained, often times the datasets underlying these products are lost.  The UNHCR Data Curation project will collect, index, process, store and, for some datasets (not all), make available these datasets for use by others.  The goals are to improve institutional memory and to improve efficiency by re-using existing datasets.  Doing this will also make UNHCR a more predictable source of data at regional and global levels, and with partners, both development and humanitarian.  Making anonymized microdata publicly available ensures that maximum use is made of the data, improves data quality and credibility and may prevent duplication of surveys and thereby reduce the costs for humanitarian and development organizations that are in need of data to inform their programming. 

UNHCR routinely supports a number of household survey data level collections each year, conducted directly by UNHCR or implemented by partners.  Traditionally this data has not been retained in formats and locations that make it available for future use, either in country, by UNHCR globally, independent researchers, or by partners such as the World Bank UNHCR Joint Data Centre.

To support an institutional shift towards augmenting open data, UNHCR has created an internal data library (RIDL) for data storage and the external-facing UNHCR Microdata library, an online repository which will allow public and/or licensed access to anonymized data collected in these surveys, and users to perform directly their own analysis.  UNHCR is also a data provider to other open data platforms, including the Humanitarian Data Exchange.

The first priority for the Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator is to retain, clean, index, document and anonymize microdata from surveys or censuses and, to a lesser extent, administrative registers. The data may be available for all or a subset of variables covered by the data collection exercise.

The second priority for the Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator is to source, retain, clean, index and anonymize microdata from protection monitoring systems, programme monitoring systems, needs assessments, shape files for mapping and other data systems that relate to the population of concern.

The Data Curation Officer does not need to index datasets from PRIMES, MSRP, Focus or any other corporate system that already has a centralized data warehouse or business intelligence repository.

Microdata that is relevant to national, regional and global level decision making should be prioritized.  Data that is useful at a sub-national level is second priority.

Datasets are also available with a varying degree of quality which requires careful assessment and substantial amount of cleaning and preparation before they can be shared. Additionally, datasets must also be properly and carefully anonymized before they can be shared.    

The Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator will be responsible for:

¿ assisting with data selection and assessing the suitability of the data for publication,
¿ cleaning data,
¿ identifying and addressing missing data,
¿ applying imputation methods as needed,
¿ anonymizing personally identifiable data,
¿ populating the microdata library with datasets and corresponding metadata.

The Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator will more specifically performing the following activities:

¿ Identifying and obtaining historical datasets suitable for sharing.
¿ have data stored within RIDL according to data security and data protection protocols.
¿ Work with different units and partners to ensure relevant metadata is provided along with the data.
¿ Develop instructions and guidance documents to evaluate the quality of the selected datasets and assess suitability for publication, removing and correcting errors if necessary, and work with field locations as relevant.
¿  Apply statistical disclosure control (SDC) techniques used to anonymize all datasets ensuring that no person or household is identifiable from the results of an analysis of survey data (at an appropriate level of risk), or in the release of microdata, utilizing the R-based sdcMicro package. This will be done in consultation with the data producer that will guide in the determination of key and sensitive variables. Such anonymization will be performed both at the household level and individual level, and applying different methods for public use and licensed use files.
¿ Perform statistical analysis on pre vs post anonymization utility variables to verify anonymized data maintains validity and should be recommended for sharing.
¿ Generate the appropriate metadata according to the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) metadata standard and any other documentation needed to catalogue, record and communicate to users all the salient characteristics of the micro-datasets shared on the MicroData Library.
¿ Where applicable, the Assistant Information Management Officer Microdata Curator will apply HXL tags to microdata. Selected Candidate will be offered a contract until 31 December 2019 Interested qualified internal and external candidates meeting the requirements of the Job Descriptions posted online can apply as follows no later than 23 October 2019 Midnight Geneva Time.
This vacancy is now closed.
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