Background

In 2015, the 193 United Nations (UN) Member States adopted 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity. The SDGs cover a broad set of challenges such as economic inclusion, diminishing natural resources, geopolitical instability, environmental degradation and the multi-faceted impacts of climate change. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved over the next 15 years and they define the agenda for inclusive economic growth through to 2030.

The rapid advancement of technology in the past decade has changed the way organizations operate. UN General Assembly in its resolution 68/220[1] recognizes the vital role that science, technology and innovation, including environmentally sound technologies, can play in development and in facilitating efforts to address global challenges. To improve on the delivery of UN mandates to create meaningful impact, a programme was designed to leverage on latest technology and harness global expertise and effort for the development of open source solutions, tools and services to achieve the SDGs. This unified innovation programme is being piloted in the form of United Nations Technology Innovation Labs (UNTIL), championed by the United Nations Office for Information and Communication and Technologies (UN-OICT).

UN-OICT and UNDP have partnered with MaGIC of Malaysian government to establish a lab at Cyberjaya, Malaysia. The mission of UNTIL Malaysia is to build solutions to needs related to UN mandates, namely in SDGs, for several thematic areas that are central to Malaysia and the region. UNTIIL Malaysia aims to bring right project interventions, global technology, expertise, and network through which and entrepreneurs to work on meaningful development of sustainable solutions. All solutions will be based on open source standards, will use open data and will eventually be available to all UN Member States.

This specific assignment of partnership consultant is to engage an expert who will help UNTIL Malaysia to build a partnership eco system in the country and in the region who will support and champion the UNTIL Malaysian program and the upcoming projects under the agreed thematic areas.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of work:

Within delegated authority, the Blockchain Project Lead will be responsible for the following duties:

• Works on designing and Building a Blockchain platform for product tracking and supply chain traceability project;
•  Develop technical specification documents and technical roll out plans;
• Deliver test plan, test scenarios and test cases;
• Deliver end user training and related documentations;
• Plan and deploy the deliverables to the live environment;
• Support and maintain the delivered project to achieve very high customer satisfaction;
• Manage the team of developers and guide them to achieve delivery goals;
• Maintain the quality of the technical delivery team work outputs;
• Deliver weekly progress reports with all the accomplished tasks and outcomes.

Deliverables and Timeline:

Month 1:-

• 1st Project proposal and scoping – Sign off;
• Sustainable Tourism project kick off;
• Project plan and management reports.

Month 2:-

• Technical and functional specifications sign off;
• Resource management;
• Server and capacity management and execution plan.

Month 3:-

• Development update and report on time lines;
• Regular status updates on the dev cycle;
• Testing plan sign off;
• Alpha testing kick off.

Month 4:-

• Final Dev Phase execution;
• Testing kick off;
• Roll-out plan delivery;
• On-boarding planning.

Month 5:-

• Testing sign off;
• Deployment plan;
• Go Live.

Month 6:-

• Production support plan;
• On boarding and deployment sign off;
• Final project delivery reports;
• Final Status update and sign off.

Duration:

6 months assignment, with a possibility of extension. Start date December 10th.

Terms of Payment:

Monthly payments    

1. Submission and approval of time sheets;
2. Submission and approval of 4/5 weekly reports every month.

Competencies

Functional Competencies:

• Ability to manage a technical development team.
• Ability to mentor and give directions to the team of developers and testers to deliver on time with high quality standards.
• Ability to identify issues, analyze and participate in the resolution.
• Ability to apply judgment in the context of assignments given, plan own work and manage conflicting priorities. 
• Shows pride in work and in achievements.
• Incorporating fair gender equalities in all areas of work.
• Ability to Speak and write clearly and effectively
• Ability to listen and interpret messages from others to responds appropriately.
• Demonstrates openness in sharing information and keeping people informed.      
• Ability to develop clear goals that are consistent with agreed strategies.
• Identifies priority activities and assignments; adjusts priorities as required.
• Allocates appropriate amount of time and resources for completing work.
• Ability to foresee risks, Planning and monitoring contingencies efficiently.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent) in computer science, information systems, innovation management or related field.
• A first-level university degree in combination with qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree

Experience:

• A minimum of 5 years project management in IT technical development projects is required.
• Experience in technical scoping, managing testing teams and production support is necessary.
• A minimum of 6 months of progressively responsible experience in planning, managing and implementation Blockchain system/project/program is required.
• Experience in managing development Blockchain platform and frontend portal is required.
• Experience in Hyperledger or Ethereum is desirable.
• Experience at international level is desirable.
• Experience in managing, medium to large size technical IT project is desirable.