Organizational Context
Senior Officer, Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is the world’s largest volunteer-based humanitarian network. The IFRC is a membership organization established by and comprised of its member National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. Along with National Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the IFRC is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. The overall aim of the IFRC is “to inspire, encourage, facilitate, and promote at all times all forms of humanitarian activities by National Societies with a view to preventing and alleviating human suffering and thereby contributing to the maintenance and promotion of human dignity and peace in the world.” It works to meet the needs and improve the lives of vulnerable people before, during and after disasters, health emergencies and other crises.
The IFRC has its headquarters in Geneva, with regional and country offices throughout the world. The IFRC is led by a Secretary General who provides the central capacity of to serve, connect, and represent National Societies. The IFRC’s focus includes providing support to the IFRC governance mechanisms; setting norms and standards; providing guidance; ensuring consistency, coordination, and accountability for performance; knowledge sharing; promoting collaboration within and respect for the RCRC Movement; and expanding engagement with partners.
The IFRC has five regional offices, as follows: Americas (Panama City); Africa (Nairobi); Asia and Pacific- AP (Kuala Lumpur); Europe (Budapest); Middle East and North Africa-MENA (Beirut). The regional office for Africa supports 49 National Societies to strengthen their humanitarian and developmental work, helping them to remain sustainable, relevant partners of choice and accountable for their actions.
The Senior Officer for Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (PMER) in the regional office is part of the regional management team and the Planning, Partnership and Resource Development Unit. The incumbent will work closely with the Partnership and Resource Development team, as well as the other technical units in the regional office, the cluster and country offices. This position is subject to support and technical guidance from Partnerships Division in Geneva and the PMER Manger in the Policy, Strategy and Knowledge (PSK) Department in particular.
Job Purpose
This position will help the PMER team develop and implement appropriate monitoring and evaluation processes and systems to support project management, impact assessment and learning. Providing technical support to Heads of Unit, Country and Cluster offices, the M & E Senior Officer will ensure data collection, analysis and dissemination of monitoring and evaluation results.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
Monitoring
- Ensure that monitoring plans are in place for all appeals and plans
- Develop and maintain monitoring schedules for all programmes and projects
- Provide project management support by facilitating the use of regular monitoring reports for analysis and decision making.
- Aggregate and evaluate monitoring results and feedback across the region and technical domains to enable effective program and project management and organizational learning
- Provide constant communication and support to ensure Country and Cluster offices are aware of their monitoring and evaluation obligations.
Evaluation
- Advise sector leads, country and cluster leads on the utility and relevance of formative and summative evaluation designs and provide advice to ensure rigor in methodology and conclusions.
- Draw on various evaluation designs such as Mixed Methods, Rapid Appraisal, Case Study, Interrupted time series and longitudinal, participatory, pattern analysis and Cross-sectional designs to advise colleagues.
- Identify opportunities for participatory evaluation and integration with Community Engagement and Accountability to ensure evaluations consider community input
- Use qualitative data when applicable and advise on qualitative data collection methods and good practices (including interview skills, focus group facilitation, and survey design and response categories).
- Advise on the utility of various types of data collection and analysis tools using computer software and IT. (e.g. STATA, R, SPSS, Survey Monkey, Computer assisted Content Analysis)
- Advise on sampling techniques (such as simple random sampling, stratified, and purposive) and their applications and relevance for a selected evaluation or methodology.
- Provide quality control during the review and comment phase throughout an evaluation process
- Lead negotiations with external partner and lead author on evaluations where necessary.
- Participate in relevant internal and external networks to stay current on trends and technology related to monitoring; propose new tools for continuous improvement and learning.
- Ensures best practices are captured and disseminated; propose and lead the production of large-scale evaluation material.
- Aggregate and evaluate monitoring results and feedback across the region and technical domains to enable effective program and project management and organizational learning.
M&E System
- Provide technical leadership to ensure monitoring systems include SMART indicators that demonstrate impact or progress, reliable data collection methods and analysis of program and project results.
- Provide technical support during program and project design phase to ensure indicators are well aligned with regional and global results-matrices
- Help design and maintain indicator and qualitative data platforms, such as Excel, Survey Monkey, Google Analytics; develop and maintain survey instruments for learning activities and analytics
- Identifies standard sources of bias that effect data validity using different methods and distinguish between standard types of statistics and types of quantitative data used to present and analyse evaluation findings, including frequency distributions, cross tabulation, significance tests, and variance analysis.
Job Duties and Responsibilities (continued)
Data management
- Provide technical advice/support on the suitable data management system for the organization
- Ensure ethical standards regrading data protection is observed e.g. cloud storage
- Draw inference from the project data and provide analysis that can support programming and throw more light on effects of the intervention
Technical Support/Capacity Building
- Provide training/Technical support on monitoring and evaluation for IFRC and National Society staff as requested.
- Provide tools, tips and guides to help budget holders and National Societies design monitoring and evaluation plans and studies; lead training of staff and NS on monitoring and evaluation.
- Stay current on trends concerning monitoring and evaluation and advise the region on adaption and adoption of new tools and technology.
- Support the sharing of findings and lessons learned to improve overall organizational learning.
- Provide input to the development of global quality standards and tools in the areas monitoring and evaluation
Education
- University degree, or equivalent, in relevant discipline (International Relations, Humanitarian Affairs, Statistics etc.). Required
- Relevant post-graduate degree or MBA, Statistics (or equivalent). Required
- Relevant professional training or relevant experience in monitoring or evaluation. Required
Experience
- Minimum of 3 years work experience in corporate reporting and planning. Required
- Minimum of 3 years work experience in an international setting. Preferred
- Experience working in the developing countries. Preferred
- Experience working in the Africa Region. Preferred
- People Management experience. Preferred
- Experience developing, communicating, and implementing business plans. Required
Knowledge, Skills and Languages
- Demonstrated capacity for analytical and strategic thinking. Required
- Superior writing and editing skills. Required
- Excellent communication and inter-personal skills. Required
- Excellent relationship building skills; ability to build and strengthen internal networks. Required
- Expertise in planning processes. Required
- Conducting and/or supervising needs assessments and surveys, data analysis. Preferred
Competencies, Values and Comments
Values: Respect for diversity; Integrity; Professionalism; Accountability.
Core competencies: Communication; Collaboration and teamwork; Judgement and decision making; National society and customer relations; Creativity and innovation; Building trust.
Comments
This a Regional National position being out-posted to any of our 15 Country Cluster Delegations with a preference for Chad, Ethiopia, or Uganda. Candidates who are nationals of these countries and meet the qualifications and required experience are encouraged to apply.
