UN Women: ICT Specialist (Enterprise Applications)

Background

UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, the UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

The Division of Management and Administration (DMA)  is responsible for financial and administrative resources including information systems and telecommunications, the effective and efficient delivery of essential operations services in UN Women, continuous development and improvement in operations, policies, and methods to align with UN Women and stakeholders' evolving business needs and advisory support to the Executive Director in the formulation and implementation of the UN Women overall mission, strategy and plans of actions.

The Information Systems and Telecommunication (IST) Office located in the Division of Management and Administration, is responsible for the strategic planning and development of information and telecommunication systems and services, IST solutions, sourcing of information systems and equipment to support business needs and for the maintenance, availability, reliability and quality of performance of information and telecommunications systems and services globally in all UN Women offices.

The IST Office strategically outsources significant parts of its infrastructure and applications development to commercial vendors as well as UN system partners. UN Women is fully leveraging cloud solutions for all core corporate hosting needs, including Office365 and Microsoft Azure. Operations of cloud hosted solutions as well as core network components are outsourced to United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC).

Reporting to the Chief Information Systems and Telecommunications, the ICT Specialist  will provide leadership, project management and technical direction and assistance to the teams involved in the organization’s digital transformation and be responsible for the ongoing support of the enterprise applications and systems including ERP, content management, knowledge management, business intelligence and business process automation.

Duties and Responsibilities

Management of Enterprise Applications unit

• Work with Chief IST to develop annual work plan and budget for the Enterprise Applications unit
• Develop multi-year application roadmap to keep applications current with new efficiencies and improvements aligned with the Organizational Strategic Plan and ICT Plan
• Ensure adequate staffing and resources are in place to support the organization requirements by overseeing personnel work schedules, providing coaching and guidance as needed
• Promote collaboration between IST personnel and business teams to ensure a high level of customer satisfaction

Implementation of ICT strategy, governance, policies and procedures

• Works with Chief, IST to develop and maintain an IT Strategy, service delivery agreements, operating guidelines and governance best practices in support of the UN Women's corporate goals
• Champion change management and re-engineering initiatives within the ICT applications area.
• Establish and maintain appropriate ICT governance processes, policies and procedures related to Enterprise applications

Operations and evolution of digital platforms and business applications

• Manage the office automation in UN Women, including designing the information architecture, business processes and workflows to be supported in line with HQ and field requirements.
• Manage system development in alignment with the ICT strategy and system development life cycle procedures.
• Lead and manage the design and rollout of enhancements to Oracle Cloud ERP platform for business needs covering key modules of HR, SCM, PPM and Financials
• Lead and manage the development and support of effective Web applications utilizing technologies such as C#, .Net, HTTP, REST, JSON, and API development with hosting on Microsoft Azure
• Lead and direct the design, architecture, and buildout of an effective BI/Data Warehouse environment for UN Women and deliver effective data management strategies.
• Serve as the accountable executive with software vendors and for all business software purchases, software product development, servicing, and support.
• Develop and enforce appropriate policies, procedures, and resource management practices.
• Direct the development and support of critical business applications, delivering 24x7x365 systems availability through effective monitoring, return to service, and problem resolution.
• Establish strong working relationships with senior business and technology leaders to define and own the strategic application roadmap that will enable the organization to deliver its mission.
• Work closely with the UN Women ICT Infrastructure and Information Security Units to ensure applications are tested and prepared for promotion into production environments including documentation, testing, scanning and penetration testing.
• Ensure that outsourced and in-house corporate databases and data warehouses facilities conform to suitable technical standards.

Provides web management services, focusing on achievement of the following results:

• In coordination with the relevant business units in UN Women, lead the design, development and management of websites, knowledge portals for Intranet platforms
• Monitors change management efforts to ensure that the UN Women Websites quality, integrity and efficiency are maintained
• Identifies emerging opportunities for further leveraging UN Women’s inter/intranet capabilities through close client and partner interaction as well as industry intelligence
• Represents UN Women in organizational and inter-organizational forums and networks with direct relevance to the Portal and related Inter/Intranet initiatives
• Manage services to support and guide the use of ICT in UN Women’s programmatic work.

Impact of results

The key results have an impact on the overall efficiency UN Women operations, including improved business results and client services. Forward-looking IST management has an impact on the organization of office management, knowledge sharing, and information provision.

Competencies

Core values:

• Integrity;
• Professionalism;
• Respect for Diversity.

Core Competencies:

• Awareness and Sensitivity Regarding Gender Issues;
• Accountability;
• Creative Problem Solving;
• Effective Communication;
• Inclusive Collaboration;
• Stakeholder Engagement;
• Leading by Example.

Please visit this link for more information on UN Women’s Values and Competencies Framework: https://www.unwomen.org/sites/default/files/Headquarters/Attachments/Sections/About%20Us/Employment/UN-Women-values-and-competencies-framework-en.pdf

Functional competencies

• Advising on and guiding of UNW IST initiatives and providing cost effective and innovative technology solutions to business challenges.
• Contributing to the formulation of IST strategy and policy based to meet corporate business needs.
• Demonstrating expertise and experience in IT, especially ERP and web-based solutions and an ability to drive innovation and improvements in technology standards within UNW.
• Raising awareness of the potential of information technology and knowledge management, promoting wider corporate and program usage of computer systems and applications, and developing strategic partnerships with external parties.
• Ability to lead and manage IT support services including IT hardware/infrastructure support, ERP support, other IT applications support, web design and maintenance.
• Ability to provide input to business process re-engineering, elaboration and implementation of new systems.
• Ability to develop strategic partnerships with internal and external parties.

Required Skills and Experience