Duties and Responsibilities
Data and statistics are essential in understanding, managing and mitigating the economic, environmental, and human and social of external shocks and stressors and for designing appropriate responses and accelerated actions to put countries back on track to achieving the SDGs. Almost 10 years after the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, countries still rely on out-of-date and incomplete statistics to inform implementation and review progress. SIDS, in particular, are facing a unique set of challenges. These are well documented and are underlined in the recent “Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for Small Island Developing States (ABAS): A Renewed Declaration for Resilient Prosperity”, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), the Paris Agreement and the 2018 OECD report “Making Development Co-operation Work for Small Island Developing States”, These documents all recognize that improved data collection and statistical analysis are required to enable SIDS to effectively plan, follow up on, evaluate the implementation of and track success in attaining the SDGs and other internationally agreed development goals. To support SIDS to address their data capacity challenges, DESA’s United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) and the SIDS Unit of the Division for the Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) have jointly developed the project Data for SIDS (DATAS), with the overall objective of strengthening the capacities of national statistical systems to produce and disseminate better and more timely data and statistics to inform decision making through four interconnected components; (i) national data governance and coordination; (ii) national data production and availability; (iii) national data dissemination and reporting and; (iv) SIDS to SIDS collaboration and experience exchange. This will accelerate the country’s progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while pursuing national development objectives. DATAS will bridge data and information gaps in priority areas identified by the country by improving human and institutional capabilities for collecting, producing and integrating data from across the data ecosystem to publish more timely and granular indicators and statistics. It will also support national statistical offices (NSOs) in their efforts to collaborate with other government entities and partners to obtain and maintain access to non-traditional data sources to increase timeliness and granularity of statistical information. The work will, overall, take the same work approach as the Data for Now initiative, currently implemented by UNSD. The Data for Now initiative (Data4Now), co-led by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), aims to support countries in developing their capacities to deliver the information needed by local and national policy and decision makers to achieve the 2030 Agenda. To this end, it supports members of the national statistical systems in participating countries to collaborate more effectively with local, national and global partners from intergovernmental organizations, academia, civil society and the private sector, in order to leverage innovative sources, technologies and methods for the streamlined production and dissemination of better, more timely and disaggregated data for sustainable development. The goal is to integrate new methods, data sources, and technologies into existing national statistical systems, explicitly not to create parallel data infrastructures at the country level. To implement the DATAS initiative, through the project “Supporting informed decision making through the DATA for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) initiative (DATAS)” funded by the Government of Ireland, DESA is seeking a consultant to provide assistance in line with national priorities to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic and Demographic Studies (INSEED) in Comoros and other members of the National Statistical System to coordinate and implement activities related to: • Strengthening intra-governmental collaboration, with particular focus on identified project priority areas, contributing to the DATAS initiative and enabling increase availability, quality and timeliness of disaggregated data under prioritized areas. • Stakeholder engagement with key producers and users of data across the national statistical system to ensure a common understanding and agree on roles and responsibilities and increase data uptake in decision-making • Improving capacities national statistical offices and other members of the National Statistical Systems to independently and sustainably reproduce, update, and improve high-quality, timely and disaggregated data on key areas related to specific Sustainable Development Goals and Targets. • Streamlining workflows based on data sharing agreements and collaboration for data integration among the various members of the national statistical systems in target countries. • Strengthening data integration and data management capabilities, including cloud technologies, interoperability standards, and data linkage/matching methods, and modernization of IT infrastructure necessary to handle the data sources and implement the methods, based on the IT infrastructure of the NSO. • Strengthening capacity of national staff in statistical estimation and data science methods to produce specific statistical indicators on the areas of priority. • Validating and documenting statistical indicators produced on the areas of priority. • Increasing skills and knowledge on data quality, including data and metadata standardization, exchange, and validation methodologies. • Ensuring quality of source data and methods to produce statistical indicators on the areas that the country has identified as a priority (related to the Sustainable Development Goals and targets). • Strengthening capacity of national staff to disseminate and communicate disaggregated and high-frequency SDG-related data, including through web-based, integrated, and open access to national SDG datasets, as well as data visualizations, maps, dashboards, data stories and other analytic products. The activities highlighted above require close collaboration across multiple organizations contributing to a wide range of data assets, technologies, skills, knowledge and expertise. They also require close coordination between the DATAS national team led by INSEED and representatives of DESA’s UNSD and SIDS unit, GPSDD, the World Bank, UNDP and SDSN, as well as the Resident Coordinator’s Office (RCO), UN country team, donors and other international partners supporting statistical development initiatives in the country. The objective of this consultancy is to work closely with the national team, led by INSEED to follow up on project deliverables, oversee administrative tasks, and facilitate communication between the core national team, other national stakeholders/collaborators, national and international consultants and DESA staff to achieve a shared outcome and common goals under the project. The consultant will report to DESA through UNSD staff designated as his/her Supervisor. Specifically, the work assignment will involve the following: • Under the guidance of INSEED and DESA focal points, liaise with, and support, the core national team (led by INSEED), other national stakeholders/collaborators (including representatives from the government agencies, international organizations, academia, civil society and private sector, etc.), international consultants (technical consultants, methodological experts, etc.) hired by the project, and DESA staff for effective delivery of training and advisory services under the project. • Develop and monitor a detailed plan of activities, specifying key outputs and timelines, as well as responsible focal points, under the guidance of the INSEED project focal points and in close consultation with the core national team, DESA staff as well as the RCO, UN Country Team, UN Regional Commission and other development partners in-country. • Provide translation between English and French during informal meetings and working level documents for the project implementation when and where this is necessary. • Maintain increased stakeholder engagement and collaboration under prioritized areas. • Maintain regular communications with the focal points of each topic to identify bottlenecks in the processes and needs in time. • Coordinate workshops and training sessions in consultation with the INSEED and the DESA. • Identify opportunities for outreach and advocacy in-country and regionally and develop communication materials for user engagement activities aimed at integrating key outputs of the project in the policy process and advocacy. • Develop communication advocacy materials for outreach and advocacy laying out the project’s value proposition, including data stories and social media content. • Foster accountability and coordination through the issuance of monthly progress reports, which highlight the current state of the agreed deliverables and suggesting outreach activities, to both the DESA and INSEED staff. The reports are also a tool for coordinating activities within the country team and will be shared with the Director General of the National Statistical Office, the UN Resident Coordinator Office, and the DATAS and Data For Now core team. • Prepare comprehensive progress report to be submitted to the Government of Ireland and to the United Nations for monitoring and reporting purposes every 6 months of the project. • Other related tasks as assigned by supervisor.
