Head of Exploration

Job Overview

Tripoli (LBY), Libya

Job Identification 10680

Locations Tripoli (LBY), Libya

Posting Date 05/16/2023, 12:27 PM

Apply Before 06/17/2023, 06:59 AM

Job Schedule Full time

Agency UNDP

Grade NOB

Vacancy Type Fixed Term

Practice Area Effectiveness

Bureau Regional Bureau for Arab States

Contract Duration 1 Year with Possibility for extension

Education & Work Experience Master’s Degree – 2 year(s) experience OR Bachelor’s Degree – 4 year(s) experience

Required Languages Proficiency in English and Arabic languages

Vacancy Timeline 4 Weeks

Mobility required/no mobility no mobility required

Job Description

Background

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are core principles at UNDP: we value diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate, we foster inclusion as a way of ensuring all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, and we ensure equity and fairness in all our actions. Taking a ‘leave no one behind’ approach to our diversity efforts means increasing representation of underserved populations. People who identify as belonging to marginalized or excluded populations are strongly encouraged to apply. Learn more about working at UNDP including our values and inspiring stories.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

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.

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.

* 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.

Duties and Responsibilities

1.) Horizon scanning and intelligence for the Accelerator Lab

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

2.) Tapping into new data sources

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.
Demonstrate through exploratory tests the utility of new data sources for UNDP’s development work
Create partnerships for analyses of real time and other data to better inform decisions and policies
Design and deliver workshops, tools, or platforms that tap into the collective intelligence of communities and mobilise action.
Transform unstructured data sets into insights for UNDP and partners
Proactively manage risks with using data and technology, including those related to ethics and privacy

3.) 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

4.) Organizational learning and interface with the core business of UNDP

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.
Design and deliver engaging and meaningful methods for reflection on learning from explorations
Organize and implement knowledge sharing and network events;
Lead other activities related to the design and operations of the Accelerator Lab

Competencies

Core
Achieve Results:	LEVEL 2: Scale up solutions and simplifies processes, balances speed and accuracy in doing work
Think Innovatively:	LEVEL 2: Offer new ideas/open to new approaches, demonstrate systemic/integrated thinking
Learn Continuously	LEVEL 2: Go outside comfort zone, learn from others and support their learning
Adapt with Agility	LEVEL 2: Adapt processes/approaches to new situations, involve others in change process
Act with Determination	LEVEL 2: Able to persevere and deal with multiple sources of pressure simultaneously
Engage and Partner	LEVEL 2: Is facilitator/integrator, bring people together, build/maintain coalitions/partnerships
Enable Diversity and Inclusion	LEVEL 2: Facilitate conversations to bridge differences, considers in decision making

Cross-Functional & Technical competencies
Thematic Area	Name	Definition
Business Direction and Strategy	System Thinking	Ability to use objective problem analysis and judgement to understand how interrelated elements coexist within an overall process or system, and to consider how altering one element can impact on other parts of the system
Business Development	Knowledge Generation	Ability to research and turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need
Digital and Innovation	Story Telling	Ability to empathise with people’s perceptions, motivations, feelings and mental models and craft narratives to build an emotive argument for change accordingly. Ability to present data, insights or information in compelling ways to mobilise resources, talent or action. Ability to choose media and channels that is fit for purpose to reach specific target audiences.
Digital and Innovation	Data Analysis	Ability to extract, analyse and visualize data (including Real-Time Data) to form meaningful insights and aid effective decision making
Digital and Innovation	Collective Intelligence Design	Ability to design, lead or manage processes that help a collective to become smarter together by bringing together diverse groups of people, data, and technology. Ability to define and articulate why and how collective intelligence can add value to development programming (understanding problems; finding solutions; decision making and mobilising action; monitoring progress in real time, learning and adapting) Being able to integrate different types of data (realtime, ‘ground-truth’ and novel data) to unlock fresh insights. Understand guidelines and principles around data privacy, ethics and protection. Increase diversity of inputs – and look beyond the ‘usual suspects’, ability to navigate and manage a variety of actors, appreciate the diversity in perspectives, opinions, expertise. Ability to facilitate platforms or sessions where people can contribute by providing their views and ideas independently and freely. Being people-centred: ensure people understand and can determine how their data is used. Feed back inputs and insights to empower people, don’t extract data.

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

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, Knowledge, and Skills

Professional experience in development programming or policy and social innovation;
Demonstrated capacity in horizon scanning;
Demonstrated capacity in data analysis and visualization.
Proficiency in English and Arabic languages. .

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
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.

Disclaimer

Important information for US Permanent Residents (‘Green Card’ holders)

Under US immigration law, acceptance of a staff position with UNDP, an international organization, may have significant implications for US Permanent Residents. UNDP advises applicants for all professional level posts that they must relinquish their US Permanent Resident status and accept a G-4 visa, or have submitted a valid application for US citizenship prior to commencement of employment.

UNDP is not in a position to provide advice or assistance on applying for US citizenship and therefore applicants are advised to seek the advice of competent immigration lawyers regarding any applications.

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.

Non-discrimination

UNDP has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual exploitation and misconduct, sexual harassment, and abuse of authority. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks, and will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles.

UNDP is an equal opportunity and inclusive employer that does not discriminate based on race, sex, gender identity, religion, nationality, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, disability, pregnancy, age, language, social origin or other status.

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