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Head of Exploration

Thimphu

  • Organization: UNDP - United Nations Development Programme
  • Location: Thimphu
  • Grade: Junior level - NO-B, National Professional Officer - Locally recruited position
  • Occupational Groups:
    • Operations and Administrations
    • Information Technology and Computer Science
    • Civil Society and Local governance
    • Scientist and Researcher
    • Innovations for Sustainable Development
    • Managerial positions
    • Design (digital, product, graphics or visual design)
  • Closing Date: Closed

Background

The UNDP Strategic Plan embraces the complexity of development and commits the organization to helping countries find faster, more durable solutions to achieve Agenda 2030. Important development trends like urbanization, climate change, and rising inequalities pose significant challenges on our path to achieve the 2030 agenda of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
 
UNDP has begun incubating a number of strategic initiatives aimed at ensuring UNDP is ‘fit for purpose’ to deliver a new generation of solutions in line with the challenges the world faces.  One such key strategic initiatives is the UNDP Accelerator Lab Network which operates as part of UNDP’s sustainable development offering.
 
US:
 
We are building the largest and fastest learning global network on development challenges. We have already set up 60 labs in 78 countries) embedded within UNDP’s global architecture and country platforms. We are now recruiting for a second cohort of 30 labs to be based in UNDP around the world. We use the power of the crowd, machine learning and distributed decision making to support partners to understand problems, develop new solutions, promote more inclusive decision making, and provide better oversight of what is done. We identify grassroots solutions and stretch their potential to accelerate development.  We apply experimentation closely with government partners to grow this as a mode of operating to reduce costs of large-scale public sector reforms. Experimentation helps us learn whether particular assumptions are accurate before deploying solutions at scale, especially in the rapidly evolving contexts that often dominate development progress.

You:
 
You are excited about starting, designing and managing activities, direct engagement with local communities and collaboration across global networks.  You are driven by learning new things, figuring out how they work and translating them across sectors.   You tell stories of emergent solutions and you gravitate to solving global development challenges.
 
You have a natural inclination to interdisciplinarity, cross cultural mindset and cross sectoral experience with the cosmopolitan attraction for diversity.  You are driven by a strong sense of purpose and commitment to make change happen and a keen eye to identify emerging opportunities and ‘at the edge’ trends.  You are open to discovery and exploration, capable of articulating insights and ideas through visual thinking, open to serendipity and discovery yet are pragmatic and constructive working with public sector authorities. You are comfortable with ambiquity, capable of zooming out for context and zooming in for content and execution- sharp in pursuit of objectives, fast at adapting and changing course when needed.  You have superb compentencies in program and portfolio management, are at ease with decision-making processes and dynamics of different models of governance. 
 
You are curious, a natural strategic thinker and a talented do-er.  You understand systems, the good, the bad and the ugly, and are capable of working within bureaucracies to make change, leverage technology to extend, enhance and multiply exploration, discovery and execution.  You are digitally savy, you hack tools, and you are keen to be a part of a large global organization exhibiting United Nations values.
 
You have experience and are motivated by advocating for change – you know how to work with the skeptics, demonstrate the value of your work to those who do not understand the innovation lingo and are adept at navigating organisational politics.
 
 

Duties and Responsibilities

Horizon scanning and intelligence for the Accelerator Lab
 
  • Work with government counterparts and UNDP programs to identify, visualize and communicate emerging development trends, data, technologies and issues with a particular focus on the edges and “below the radar screen” events, opportunities and players, and systemically map their impacts on  economy, environment, society, and livelihoods of the poorest.
  • Identify new sources of evidence and insights, analyze and visualize patterns in unstructured sources of data, present new insights in accessible and comprehensive ways to enable sensemaking and analysis
  • Proactively explore and identify the new methods/approaches and frontier knowledge to tackle development challenges, collaborate with the Experimentation lead to turn these into learning options for addressing specific policy issues in the country
  • Provide technical guidance for horizon scanning, foresight and data analysis for colleagues and partners.
  • Contribute to the formulation of the Accelerator Lab service lines to the UNDP Country Programme based on findings from horizon scanning, systems’ mapping, and local knowledge
Tapping into new data sources
 
  • Demonstrate through exploratory tests the utility of new data sources for UNDP’s development work
  • Connect UNDP with different players in the data ecosystem: data providers, experts in ethics and privacy, data scientists, subject domain experts, social scientists, IT providers
  • Create partnerships for analyses of real time and other data to better inform decisions and policies
  • Set up partnerships with private sector companies including mobile network operators among others to gain access to anonymized data sets that can be used for sustainable development.
  • Design and deliver workshops, tools, or platforms that tap into the collective intelligence of communities and mobilise action.
  • Proactively manage risks with using data and technology, including those related to ethics and privacy
  • Transform unstructured data sets into insights for UNDP and partners
Working out loud
 
  • Share findings from the exploration on future trends, new methodologies/approaches, potential partnership,and others within UNDP and with partners;
  • Proactively use blog posts and social media to share insights, attract partners and help position Accelerator Lab at the forefront of the exploration of new trends. 
  • Liaise with UNDP’s global Accelerator Lab network and share learnings and insights from the country-specific experience
  • Jointly with the CO, support lab partners to develop an emerging pipeline of new initiatives, support other activities related to the design and operation of the Lab
 
Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP
 
  • Advocates for the need of UNDP programs and government counterparts to keep abreast of emerging trends, identify “weak signals” and adopt anticipatory approaches
  • Advocates for the need to embed intelligence derived from data into programs and portfolios of experiments
  • Set up tools and partnerships to ransform information into actionable intelligence
  • Design and deliver horizon scanning trainings for partners and UNDP, help embed horizon scanning and attention to the ‘edge’ activities in the CO and with the partners
  • Work together with your Accelerator Lab colleagues and experts to codify and advance the Accelerator Lab practice and exploration in particular.
  • Organize and implement knowledge sharing and network events;
  • Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab
  • Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from explorations

 

Competencies

Core:
 
Innovation
Ability to make new and useful ideas work
 
Leadership
Ability to persuade others to follow
 
People Management
Ability to improve performance and satisfaction
 
Communication
Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform
 
Delivery
Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement
 
Technical/Functional:
 
Innovation
Ability to manage organizational resources and deployment in pursuit of innovation approaches and initiatives.

 

Required Skills and Experience

Education:
 
Master’s degree in Social sciences, Data science, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, Business Intelligence, or related field and minimum of 2 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization
 
OR
 
Bachelor’s degree in Social sciences, Data science, Statistics, Physics, Computer Science, Business Intelligence, or related field and minimum of 4 years of professional experience in development programming or policy; social innovation; partnership building; engagement (public and private sector) and/or resource mobilization

Experience:
 
  • Professional experience in development programming or specific policy areas and social innovation.
  • Demonstrated capacity in horizon scanning;
  • Demonstrated capacity in data analysis and visualization.
  • Experience in following areas is desirable but not necessary:
  • Proven professional knowledge and experience in social innovation approaches such as Systems Thinking, Ethnography, Crowdsourcing, Collective Intelligence Design, Citizen Science, Positive Deviance, Social Network Analysis, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
  • Demonstrated successful experience in bringing about organizational change
  • Professional experience in partnership building and engagement (public and private sector)
  • Demonstrated capacity to use open data, mobile data, geospatial data, drone & satellite data, citizen data for informing policy making, strategic planning, or programme design.
  • Proven professional knowledge and experience in at least one of the following: Future thinking and Foresight, Design Research, and Systems Mapping;
  • Key awareness of key global and regional trends;
  • Demonstrated access to networks of edge innovators

Language:

  • Proficiency in written and spoken English. 
Other:
* The Accelerator Labs will be comprised of a core team with niche capabilities that focus on exploration, experimentation and grassroots innovation. Within the first 6-8 months of the Lab fully functioning, each member of the Core team will take the lead on one of the following functions:
 
1) Coordination
2) Training
3) Communications
 
The Core team of the Accelerator lab will have capabilities in:
 
  • Experimentation (instituting rapid learning about emerging challenges through design and running of a portfolio of experiments that is coherent with the type of challenges that are part of UNDP’s strategic plan, and
  • Mapping Solutions: ethnographic methods and immersion in community dynamics, identification of and work with lead users, and implications of bottom up solutions for the policy design
  • Exploration: The exploration function focuses on discovery and sensemaking of emerging trends, implications for systemic impacts and risks, and their potential for accelerating progress toward SDGs.  Its work feeds into the portfolio of experiments ensuring its coherence with the emerging risks and opportunities and connects local dynamics and solutions into the broader national and international ecosystem of potential funders, partners, and allies thereby increasing the chances for acceleration.  While critical for the functioning of the Accelerator Lab, the exploration function will also service the Country Office as determined and agreed with the UNDP senior management.

 

Disclaimer

Important applicant information

All posts in the GS categories are subject to local recruitment.

Applicant information about UNDP rosters

Note: UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement.  We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

Workforce diversity

UNDP is committed to achieving diversity within its workforce, and encourages all qualified applicants, irrespective of gender, nationality, disabilities, sexual orientation, culture, religious and ethnic backgrounds to apply. All applications will be treated in the strictest confidence.

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This vacancy is now closed.
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