Job Vacancy @ United Nations Foundation – Senior Country Manager, Technical Lead, Digital Impact Alliance

Position Overview

The Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) is a “think, do, replicate” tank that investigates digital transformation best practice at the national, regional and global level. We combine practical research with evidence-based advocacy to identify which digital efforts work, package them as reusable solutions, and encourage their use. DIAL is funded through a collaboration among the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCDO) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), and hosted within the UN Foundation in Washington, D.C.

DIAL seeks a talented, entrepreneurial, result-oriented, and experienced professional who will lead the Sierra Leone country project aimed at accelerating National Digital Transformation efforts in the country. This dynamic position requires a proactive, solution oriented, articulate, strategic thinker, to spearhead DIAL’s strategic and operational engagement in Sierra Leone and be the technical lead for DIAL’s Africa program. The Senior Country Manager/Senior Technical lead is responsible for leading and driving country projects and will provide strategic guidance and technical support to DIAL’s Africa team in shaping and developing Digital Public Infrastructure for public service delivery. It is a multi-faceted role focused on strategy and partnerships, project management, technical oversight and MEL while ensuring compliance and high-quality delivery. It will require the Senior Country Manager to be well informed about national and international development priorities in Digital Transformation and steer the sectors in response to these priorities. The Senior Country Manager will need to provide strong hands-on guidance and management at all levels to enable DIAL and country partners to achieve key targets and strengthen shared value delivery. The Senior Country Manager will also be the face of DIAL in the country and ensure its positive brand and visibility. This role offers the successful candidate an exciting position in a rapidly evolving and unpredictable political and economic environment.

This position is based in Sierra Leone.

Essential Functions

Government Engagement

• Provide direction and lead all of DIAL’s interaction with key government officials, policy makers, public influencers and regulators in Sierra Leone and serve as the day-to-day liaison with government counterparts.
• Ensure that DIAL’s strategic country objectives are aligned with Government needs and priorities.
• Establish and maintain effective long-term relations with government MDAs at leadership and technical levels.
• Monitor the regulatory and policy management environment in order to make timely interventions to inform country strategy.
• Link regularly with relevant focal points in Government to maintain constructive working relations and ensure smooth implementation of respective projects.
• Point of contact for DIAL’s delivery partners and consultants in Sierra Leone. Ensure that there is constant alignment between the government and technical support teams and support organization of workshops, interviews and technical working groups as needed.
• Represent DIAL in country meetings and other forums, and ensure accurate and timely documentation (minutes etc.)

Technical Leadership

• Responsible for the strategic technical leadership to DIAL country implementation team to ensure technical integrity and quality assurance for all DIAL country implementations
• Serve as the technical liaison between DIAL and partner governments to ensure a country led approach to government enterprise architecture delivery.
• Establish, adapt and adopt best practices and lessons learned from different countries that could be implemented in the roll-out of Digital Public Infrastructure in a resource-constrained environment.
• Provide strategic technical guidance to the Government of Sierra Leone in the adoption, deployment, and scaling of digital government services through the digital building blocks approach.
• Ensure the respective business, application, data and technology perspectives are in line with country governments’ technology and governance strategies, policies and standards.
• Serve as technical resource for GovStack project teams to identify and execute different programmatic activities and products that advance the host countries’ goals and priorities.
• Serve as subject matter expert for country implementation work through presentations in external forums.

Project Management

• Co-design and maintain country workplan with the integrated DIAL team and delivery partners.
• Responsible for the success of the country project delivery against workplan in accordance with set milestones in the contracts and communicate accordingly on progress and risks.
• On-going management of in-country projects. This may include organizing and facilitating multi-stakeholder workshops, conducting desk-based landscaping research, managing relationships across a range of stakeholders.

Business Development

• Build and manage relationships with relevant stakeholders in Sierra Leone in order to identify and catalyze strategic opportunities to develop and support initiatives that align with the DIAL’s core objectives.
• Responsible for identifying new national business opportunities and work with DIAL business development team in the successful development of concept notes and tactical approach plans.
• Technical lead in developing compelling proposals and presentations for prospective new partners and donors.
• Integrates secondary research into DIAL’s learning agenda by supporting the production of high-quality and professional publications, toolkits and blogs which capture lessons and insights regarding country engagement and learnings.
• Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL). Work with DIAL MEL team to support country partners to lead monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities to track their digital transformation journey, including development of a Theory of Change and routine MEL data collection.
• Contribute to reporting against the DIAL Results Framework and evidence to support DIAL-wide learning agenda.
• Other duties as assigned.

Selection Criteria

• Bachelor’s degree required; Master's degree preferred in computer science software engineering or other field related to technology-focused international development. Certification in Enterprise Architecture. TOGAF preferred.
• 7-10 years’ experience in international development, preferably at strategic level, with a focus on technology-centric development programs.
• Knowledge and understanding of trends in National Digital Transformation and Digital Economy in Africa.
• Strong demonstrable experience and expertise in systems architecture blueprints, strategy development and enterprise solutions.
• Ability to work collaboratively in a team and individually with an ability to manage uncertainty.
• Experience in collaborating with multiple stakeholders and driving results in multi stakeholder's environment.
• Experience working or consulting in developing and emerging economies and is sensitive to a diverse range of cultural and regional norms, applying a tactful and open-minded approach.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, networking, and positioning skills at multiple levels with the ability to manage relationships with federal and local government officials.
• Proficiency in both written and spoken English.
• Ascribe to DIAL’s values of Commitment, Collaboration, Empowerment, Courage and Thoughtful Action.

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