Officer, Monitoring & Evaluation

Background/IRC Summary:  

The Economic Recovery and Development Technical Unit (ERD TU) provides dynamic support and consultation to IRC’s field offices on livelihoods and market-driven programming — including emergency cash transfers, financial inclusion, agriculture and enterprise development. The unit provides direct technical assistance to field staff, ensuring innovation, promotion of best practices, and improvements to information collection and analysis for all economic/livelihoods programming implemented by the organization, from emergency response to post-crisis recovery.

The Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Officer will play a critical role within the ERD TU to improve the IRC’s organizational capacity to implement evidence-driven economic and livelihoods programming. The position will coordinate closely with and in support of ERD Technical Advisors, country teams, project managers, and other Technical Units (e.g. Emergency Response & Preparedness; Research, Evaluation, & Learning) to strengthen M&E processes in order to facilitate the most timely, informed decision making possible for economic and livelihoods programmes implemented by the IRC and/or local partners.

Job Overview/Summary:

The primary role of the ERD M&E Officer is to spearhead improved information management to support economic programming across the organization. This requires strengthening and streamlining existing approaches to data collection, information analysis, indicator reporting and data reflection for program decision-making.  At a base level, this role will facilitate cross-learning between ERD programmes in order to ensure all country teams collect, analyze, and report high quality information in a timely manner to best facilitate decision-making and communication between IRC staff and key external stakeholders (including affected populations, implementing partners, peer agencies, and donors).

This position will work closely with country teams to help promote consistency across M&E for reoccurring ERD programming across the organization. This includes an emphasis on building country teams’ capacity to better utilize monitoring data for programme implementation through quality data collection and evidence-based decision making. A key component of this position will be to support the TU in designing and maintaining relevant information communications technology (ICT) systems that support more robust M&E, where collected data is aggregated globally, reviewed remotely (by Technical Unit staff), and most importantly – remains relevant to country teams where they can easily access information in a timely manner to support programme implementation in field.

The main goals of this position are to:

• Improve the ability of country teams to make informed programmatic decisions based on timely data and quality information analysis; improve capacity to remotely monitor & manage local staff and/or implementing partners in high-risk areas of operation (e.g. Syria);
• Coordinate overlapping information needs to ensure consistency of assessment tools and indicators across country teams and other organizational initiatives (as appropriate)
• Identify strengths & weaknesses of current data collection / information management systems used by ERD programmes; propose roadmaps for improvement; identify opportunities for cross-country learning and capacity building;
• Establish and maintain an easily accessible library of outcomes-based assessments, indicators, and guidance materials for common ERD interventions (with support from TU);
• Support the design and implementation of ICT for M&E systems in close collaboration with TU, country teams, and other relevant project managers;

Major Responsibilities:

M&E Strategy & Design

• Ensure M&E systems are in compliance with best practice as well as with industry / donor standards for data security;
• Coordinate overlapping information needs to ensure consistency of assessment tools and indicators across country teams and other IRC initiatives (as appropriate);
• Identify key M&E indicators for economic / livelihoods programmes in collaboration with Technical Units, country-level coordinators, peer agencies, etc.;
• Propose roadmaps for improvement of existing M&E systems as informed by strategic country-level reviews and with consideration for industry-wide data initiatives (e.g. ActivityInfo, SAVIX)
• Support light proposal development in close coordination with Technical Advisors;

Learning & Capacity Strengthening

• Establish and maintain an easily accessible library of outcomes-based assessments, indicators, and guidance materials for common ERD interventions (with support from TU);
•     Build capacity in M&E system design (including multi-functional databases) to ensure adequate capacity across all IRC staff on basic principles, concepts, and management of M&E for economic programmes;
•      Leverage opportunities for cross-country learning-to-action and capacity building;
•     Promote best practice guidance & technical support mechanisms to improve field coordinators’ ability to remotely monitor & manage local staff and/or implementing partners;

Innovation and New Practices

• Support the design and implementation of ICT for M&E systems in close collaboration with TU, country teams, and other relevant project managers, to include mobile data collection, information dashboard design, remote monitoring, etc.;
• Support country staff to incorporate participatory methods of community-level M&E systems and tools, including effective incorporation of beneficiary feedback;
• Evaluate existing and proposed ICT for M&E systems to ensure cost-effectiveness and relevancy to ERD programmes;
• Map requirements for information dashboards and databases for priority programmes that contain inputs from multiple countries (e.g. village savings groups data)

Job Requirements:

Education: Advanced degree in relevant field such as economics, statistics, international development / public policy, or other social sciences• Advanced training in quantitative data analysis, empirical research, and/or evaluation methodologies highly desired • Technical understanding of economic recovery & development in humanitarian response contexts preferred

Work Experience: Minimum three (3) years experience designing, implementing, and supporting M&E frameworks and results, with at least one (1) year international experience supporting field-based M&E design and reporting for economic programming. Ideal candidate will also have experience designing M&E systems that incorporate information communications technology (ICT) for mobile data collection and information management / visualization / analysis.

Experience supporting programmes in emergency, conflict, and/or protracted crisis contexts highly desired. 

Demonstrated Skills and Competencies:

·   Strong capacity to communicate technical expertise that encourages best practices for implementing consistent technically sound M&E that incorporates best practice;

• Diverse experience designing & implementing successful M&E frameworks at field-level in support of donor funded programmes and grants;
• Demonstrated experience training M&E coordinators, enumerators, and/or data managers on research methods, including quantitative & qualitative data collection, survey design, sample size determination, etc.
• Familiarity with donor policies, procedures, and reporting priorities (incl. USAID, DfID, ECHO)

·      Advanced technical literacy around MS Office [Excel] and other relevant database software such as Stata, SPSS, or Access;

·    Experience with digital data collection & capacity building thereof; please note any past experience with mobile data collection platforms such as ODK Collect, KoBo Toolbox, Magpi, CommCareHQ, etc.

• Superior internal/external communication and coordination capabilities, with excellent writing skills
• Ability to operate independently and as a team member
• Excellent organizational skills and motivation to drive forward best practices organization-wide

Language Skills: Proficiency in French and/or Arabic highly desirable

Working Environment: Occasional travel