Background
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.
UN Women is establishing a Global Training Centre, which aims to become the UN leading Centre of excellence in training for gender equality. The Centre is in the process of developing programmes which will be used by UN system and UN Women staff, as well as government and civil society counterparts.
As part of this effort, UN Women will establish a virtual campus where UN Women and its partners can make quality assured training materials available to the wider public. As a first step, the virtual campus will house the curriculum and materials developed by the UN Women Training Centre and other parts of UN Women. It will also include materials, tools and kits developed by the former institutions which comprise UN Women. While this will primarily be a UN Women virtual campus, it is planned that in its second phase, UN Women will grant access to external partners, networks and institutions working on capacity development in gender equality.
By the end of 2013, fourteen courses will have been developed for use by UN Women staff, UN agencies, as well as government, civil society and partners. There is, therefore, an urgent need to develop a robust and innovative virtual campus that will consolidate UN Women's training modules, knowledge products and services, and make them available to a wider audience.
What is the virtual campus?
The virtual campus is an innovative, flexible, accessible and cost-effective platform and tool, key to building a strong, empowered and effective network of knowledge leaders, as well as a more cohesive knowledge culture on gender equality.
As a first step we propose that a technical assessment be conducted to identify the full parameters and costs of the virtual campus including technical aspects for the platform as well as the technical expertise, maintenance and running costs.
The following project approach is suggested to support the platform selection/ deployment process:
- With the support of the Training Centre team the consultant will use the PRINCE2 approach to establish proper project governance and oversight;
- The PRINCE2 approach requires the setup of a project board (i.e. a steering committee) to steer the project and be the decision-making forum during the all phases of the project starting from inception through the final delivery.
We suggest the following structure:
Project Governance
- Executive Sponsor - Senior manager who owns the project and is responsible for successful project delivery;
- Senior Users - Senior level users/ beneficiaries who will be users of the system;
- Senior Supplier - Senior level representatives who will provide technical or substantive resources;
- Project Manager - responsible for project management and reporting to the Project Board;
- Project teams - including business and technical representatives will work directly with the Project Manager on a day-to-day basis throughout the process.
Platform Selection
One of the key challenges is to select an ICT platform for the virtual campus that fulfills the needs of the organization while being coherent with the UN Women ICT environment. At the same time, the selection must include an analysis of Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) to have a clear understanding of the platform costs including one-time setup costs (licenses, development costs, hardware, consultancy, etc.) and annual running costs for system maintenance and future enhancements.
UN Women is interested in engaging a consultant, who will work with the project team members and senior managers to review the project goals, business needs, UN Women enterprise architecture, related and existing technical environment, and associated challenges. Based on the information gathered, the consultant will research and analyze available solutions that fit the aforementioned purpose - including the ones available on Cloud, used by an existing UN Agency or other organizations. These options must be to be documented and presented to the project board. In addition, the presentation should include a final recommendation for the platform that best fits with organizational goals and needs.
After the platform recommendations, we need to integrate a roadmap that will draw the procedure, configuration and rollout of the platform with a proper governance mechanism and the following key items:
- Procurement and selection of the platform and system integrator;
- System design, development and configurations to finalize for Training Centre usage;
- System testing and deployment;
- Training;
- Service desk support center;
- Post rollout support mechanism for additional enhancements to the platform.
Duties and Responsibilities
Under the direct supervision of the Communication Analyst and the Training Centre team, the consultant will be responsible for delivery of the following products:
Draft Document: technical assessment (tentative submission date 31 July 2013)
- Work with the project team members and senior managers to review the project goals, business needs, UN Women enterprise architecture and related existing technical environment as well as associated challenges;
- Based on the information gathered research and analyze available solutions that fit the purpose - including the ones available on Cloud, used by an existing UN Agency or other organizations;
- Document the options and include anticipated cost implications;
- Add analysis of Total Costs of Ownership (TCO) and include one-time setup costs (licenses, development costs, hardware, consultancy, etc.) and annual running costs for system maintenance and future enhancements;
- Based on the platform recommendations, include a roadmap that will draw the procedure, configuration and rollout of the platform with proper governance mechanism.
- Technical assessment including recommendation for the best available platform and costs (tentative submission date 5 September 2013);
- Amend technical assessment document as per the received feedback;
- Present findings to project board and recommend the best options for the organizational needs.
Competencies
Core values and Guiding Principles:
Integrity:
- Demonstrate the values of United Nations and UN Women, act without consideration of personal gain, resist undue political pressure in decision-making, no abuse of power or authority, stand by decisions in the organization’s interest, and take action in cases of unprofessional or unethical behavior.
Professionalism:
- Show pride in work and achievements, demonstrate professional competence and mastery of subject matter, conscientious and efficient in meeting commitments and achieving results, motivated by professional rather than personal concerns, show persistence when faced with challenges, and remain calm in stressful situations.
Respect for Diversity:
- Work effectively with people from all backgrounds, treat all people with dignity and respect, treat men and women equally, show respect for and understand diverse opinions by examine own biases and behaviors to avoid stereotypical responses, and do not discriminate against any individual or group.
Core Competencies
- Promoting Ethics and Integrity / Creating Organizational Precedents.
- Building support and political acumen.
- Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation.
- Building and promoting effective teams.
- Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication.
- Creating an emotionally intelligent organization.
- Leveraging conflict in the interests of the organization & setting standards.
- Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning.
- Fair and transparent decision-making; calculated risk-taking.
Required Skills and Experience
Education:
- Advanced university degree in Computer Science, Information Management or Information Systems or related fields.
Experience:
- A minimum of 5 years of professional experience working with online platforms.
- Able to research and draft quality written materials or review adherence of written materials prepared by others to administrative requirements. Able to mentor and guide, and organize learning activities within area of assigned responsibilities.
- An understanding of the United Nations system's normative and operational work is an asset.
Language Requirements:
- Fluency in both written and spoken English is required. Working knowledge of French and/or Spanish is an asset.
Note:
In July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly created UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. It merges and builds on the important work of four previously distinct parts of the UN system (DAW, OSAGI, INSTRAW and UNIFEM), which focused exclusively on gender equality and women's empowerment.
All applications must include (as an attachment) the completed UN Women Personal History form (P-11) which can be downloaded from http://www.unwomen.org/about-us/employment.
Kindly note that the system will only allow one attachment. Applications without the completed UN Women P-11 form will be treated as incomplete and will not be considered for further assessment.