RBM consultant to support institutionalization of key aspects of Annual Reports and Strategic Notes assessments

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, UN Women will lead and coordinate United Nations system's 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.

UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025 articulates the entity’s strategic direction, objectives and approaches to support efforts to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, including women’s full enjoyment of their human rights. It outlines how UN Women will leverage its normative support functions, UN system coordination and operational activities in an integrated and mutually reinforcing manner in support of transformative results for women and girls. The key monitoring and reporting framework of UN Women is the Integrated Resources and Results Framework (IRRF).

The Strategy, Planning, Resources and Effectiveness Division (SPRED) of UN Women was established in late 2019 as a part of the change management process in UN Women HQ. The Division integrates corporate strategy, resources and performance measurement to improve decision-making in order to manage for results while increasing transparency and accountability to its governing bodies and stakeholders.

The Strategic Planning Unit (SPU) in SPRED focuses on assisting UN Women to achieve higher quality development results through an integrated approach that links strategic planning and Results-Based Management (RBM) with more effective and new ways of working. SPU is the custodian of RBM as well as field- and HQ-level strategic planning and results-based monitoring and reporting in UN Women. SPU provides quality assurance on strategic planning and results monitoring and reporting exercises at the corporate and field levels. It takes a collaborative approach to strategic planning and programmatic learning, creating space for innovation and enabling UN Women and its partners to be more effective, knowledge and data-driven, and driving higher quality UN Women programming. It is also charged with engagement on all planning inter-agency initiatives. SPU is also the leading unit as business owner for UN Women results management systems to support strategic planning and results-based monitoring and reporting processes as well as data aggregation and analysis to communicate on results with stakeholders.

Strategic Notes are the main planning documents of UN Women Offices and Divisions that articulate their strategy and the main results envisioned, along with as associated resources. Strategic Notes at the country level also articulate UN Women support to national objectives, seamlessly aligning them with the results outlined in the UN Cooperation framework.

In the context of performance evaluation, Annual Reports stand as the predominant channel for all Offices and Divisions to reflect on the accomplishments made over the year. These detailed reports encapsulate the quantifiable progress and substantive results that were achieved during the year, presenting an exhaustive summary of annual efforts.

Acting on behalf of UN Women, the Strategic Planning Unit (SPU) is currently seeking a qualified Consultant. The Consultant's role will be to support the institutionalization of pivotal aspects of the Annual Reports and Strategic Note assessments. This will be accomplished by integrating these elements into relevant guidance, processes, and practical tools, enhancing overall coherence and effectiveness of the strategic planning and reporting framework.

Duties and Responsibilities

Responsibilities

The International Consultant will work under supervision of, and in close communication with, the Data Analysis and Monitoring Specialist, who will ensure coordination with SPU and broader strategic planning and reporting processes as relevant. The timely completion, submission and approval of all the deliverables, in full compliance with the duties and responsibilities specified, are the conditions for each corresponding payment to the consultant.

1. Develop Annual Reports quality assurance (QA) assessment matrix structure and tools and templates supporting Strategic Notes’ monitoring  
2. Shift Strategic Notes & Annual Reports QA assessment matrices online
3. Develop and disseminate Annual Report & Strategic Notes QA capacity development tutorials

Deliverables

The consultant will be responsible for institutionalising previous external assessments of Strategic Notes and Annual Reports, so as to enable them to be managed with existing internal capacities of UN Women going forward. This will ensure that colleagues across the organisation who are engaged in planning and reporting processes have a shared understanding of the assessment criteria and the necessary guidance and tools to confidently assess and improve their planning and results reporting efforts. The consultant will also develop high-quality, user-friendly tools and templates to support the effective monitoring of Strategic Notes, building on existing best practices. This work will result in strengthening the consistency and quality of planning, monitoring and reporting approaches across the organisation and, more broadly, the Results-Based Management culture across UN Women, and, ultimately, stronger results attainment under UN Women’s Strategic Plan 2022-2025.

1. Develop Annual Reports quality assurance (QA) assessment matrix structure and tools and templates supporting Strategic Notes’ monitoring 

Objective: Ensure agreed set of QA criteria for everyone's understanding and use and contribute to improved monitoring of Strategic Notes by strengthening the consistency and quality of approaches across the organisation

• Initial briefings from UN Women SPU
• Review UN Women’s existing Annual Reports assessment matrix (and other related matrices, e.g. on Strategic Notes, ProDoc and evaluation assessments)
• Review and document other UN agencies’ practices
• Make a first proposal of recommended QA criteria and scoring for institutionalisation of the AR assessment (anticipated to be a self-assessment check-list format for drafting teams; rating and overarching comments against matrix format for reviewing teams)
• Incorporate comments on the proposal, mainly through two sets of feedback from UN Women, but also as needed on an ongoing basis in a limited sense and as per agreed timeline, to produce final matrix and an accompanying user-guide
• Undertake consultations and research with COs, ROs and HQ on existing tools and templates for monitoring Strategic Notes along with associated challenges and needs, as well as existing tools and templates for project-level monitoring
• Develop user-friendly, high-quality templates and tools for monitoring of Strategic Notes, in harmonisation with existing tools, templates and guidance for project-level monitoring
• Incorporate comments on the draft templates, mainly through two sets of feedback from UN Women, but also as needed on an ongoing basis in a limited sense and as per agreed timeline, to produce final templates

2. Shift Strategic Notes & Annual Reports QA assessment matrices online

Objective: Enable capture of Strategic Notes & Annual Reports QA review in a central transparent and trackable manner by creating an online interface for entering and updating QA assessment, accompanied by a dashboard presenting Annual Report/Strategic Note-up-to-global visuals of QA assessment (Office/Unit, region, global), with brief user-guides.

• Develop a brief information technology (IT) specifications dcument on the idea of hosting the Strategic Notes’ & Annual Reports’ QA assessment matrices online linked to a Power BI dashboard, in consultation with the UN Women’s Information Systems and Telecommunications (IST) team and SPU
• Incorporate comments on the specifications document and finalise
• Research and propose the best interface for hosting Strategic Notes’ & Annual Reports’ QA assessment matrices online within UN Women’s existing IT ecosystems (potentially using Microsoft Forms, Excel, Power BI, PowerAutomate and/or SharePoint Lists) and in consultation with UN Women’s IST team, including through comparative demonstration to SPU of functionality among candidate options. Proposal should include a comparison of pros and cons associated with (a) assessments stored in a UN Women IT ecosystem with an integrated data pipeline connected to a Power BI dashboard vs. (b) unintegrated assessments (e.g. current style practice)
• Incorporate comments on the proposal, mainly through two sets of feedback from UN Women, but also as needed on an ongoing basis in a limited sense and as per agreed timeline, to produce final proposal
• Convert the two QA assessment matrices into online versions, including testing and demonstration to SPU, integrated with dashboards and user-guides

3. Develop and disseminate Annual Report & Strategic Notes QA capacity development tutorials

Objective: Ensure socialisation and sustainable integration of the QA process and deliverables above into the roles and responsibilities of COs, ROs and HQ UN Women staff.

• Short desk research and consultation process to support identification of capacity building needs
• Draft capacity building materials [tutorial videos (e.g. in Canva), pdfs, PPTs, etc.], for COs, ROs and HQ users
• Finalise capacity building materials to store in an accessible and updatable manner for colleagues’ on-demand use
• Implement capacity building by conducting a series of sessions (per user group, per region is envisioned to be necessary) to ensure wide socialisation and uptake and make necessary changes to user-guides

Competencies

Core Values

• Respect for diversity
• Integrity
• Professionalism

Core Competencies

• Awareness and sensitivity regarding gender issues
• Accountability
• Creative problem solving
• Effective communication
• Effective organizational skills
• Inclusive collaboration
• Stakeholder engagement
• Leading by example
• Analytical and critical thinking skills

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Advanced university degree (Master’s or equivalent) in social sciences, demographics, economics, health, statistics or related field is required
• A first-level university degree in combination with 2 additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree

Experience

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in strategic planning, monitoring and/or reporting on gender and development programmes, including at country and global levels
• Rigorous analytical capabilities and expertise in Excel
• Experience in quality assurance analysis methodology development
• Familiarity with operationalizing UN global reporting needs is an asset
• Strong knowledge of and experience in RBM, specifically planning, monitoring and/or reporting
• Experience researching, testing and rolling out IST solutions to raise efficiency and transparency
• Strong expertise and experience in developing integrated data pipelines including data visualization in Power BI
• Experience using Microsoft Forms, PowerAutomate, SharePoint Lists is an asset
• Experience developing user guides and designing and delivering capacity building tutorials for strategic planning, monitoring and/or reporting (e.g. in Canva)

Language

• Fluency in English, both oral and written, is required 
• Proficiency in other UN languages is an advantage

Applications without a complete Personal History Form (P11) will not be considered. The P11 template can be accessed here.