CONSULTANCY - TERMS OF REFERENCE

UNRWA is a United Nations agency established by the General Assembly in 1949 and is mandated to provide assistance and protection to a population of some 5.7 million registered Palestine refugees. Its mission is to help Palestine refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, West Bank and the Gaza Strip to achieve their full potential in human development, pending a just solution to their plight. UNRWA’s services encompass education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement, microfinance and emergency assistance. UNRWA is the largest UN operation in the Middle East with more than 30,000 staff. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions.

Consultant: Information Systems Technical Specialist
(Local/International) – Beirut, Lebanon

BACKGROUND

UNRWA will be modernizing its Refugee Registration Information System (RRIS) to align with updated international standards for civil registration to ensure unhindered, secure, and protected access to UNRWA’s services. This entails the creation of an individual client-based registration system with an integrated online portal for secure access to and updating of registration records by clients that will constitute the master database for all UNRWA service provision and verification of service eligibility. The current system holds the active files of 5.7 million Palestine refugees and 0.7 million other service eligible persons. The system will re-organize existing registration files to link these with historic archival records and prepare the same for an online platform making available documentation for publicly accessible documentation on displacement of Palestine refugees from 1948 to date. The project will be guided by a team of civil registration and data protection experts and implementation of the new system design is foreseen through an external IT service provider.

Legacy RRIS was developed in C# .NET, ASP.NET and SQL Server.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The post will be responsible for translating the new approach to refugee registration, as conceptualized by the Relief and Social Services Department’s Registration and Eligibility Division into a design for the new registration information system and online portal architecture to be implemented through an external IT software provider.

Under the day-to-day supervision of the Head of the Business Service Management Section and the overall supervision of the Chief Information Officer and Director of the Information Management and Technology Department, the specialist will work closely with the Head of Refugee Registration and Eligibility Division to develop the structure of the new registration system and translate this into business requirements for implementation by an external service provider. The specialist will be responsible for the following:

• Support the project team to identify and specify the detailed business requirements for the new system in close collaboration with the Senior Civil Registration Specialists and the Information Systems Solution Architect.
• Participate in the procurement process to identify a suitable vendor, and software if applicable, that meets UNRWA requirements and/or specifications;
• Translate business requirements to functional requirements;
• Review the scope and quality of the functional and technical specifications provided by the vendor to ensure that business and functional requirements are properly reflected and accommodated;
• Ensure that suitable system controls are included in the specifications to ensure the robustness of the new system-supported processes as well as the integrity of the data entered into the new system;
• Facilitate the data migration approach, and support the data migration of records from the existing system to the new system;
• Provide advice on the user guides and training materials for end users of the system;
• Facilitate the user acceptance testing of the new system to ensure adequate breadth and depth of testing;
• Support transition planning for cutover to the new system;
• Undertake other tasks, as requested.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• University degree from an accredited educational institution in computer science or a related field.
• Formal training in systems architecture, cloud architecture, and microservices architecture.
• At least eight years of progressively responsible experience in the development and implementation of large-scale software applications, two years of which must have aspects relating to the areas of systems architecture, cloud architecture, and microservices architecture.
• For internationally recruited personnel, A minimum of 2 continuous years of relevant international experience outside UNRWA, and outside the country(s) of which the candidate is a national or holds citizenship, a passport or a national identity number. 2 years of international experience outside the applicant’s home country is required. Significant microservices architecture experience within complex embedded applications.
• Experience in building applications based on Containers, Docker, Orchestration Docker Swarm.
• Experience in migrating applications from n-tier architecture to a microservices architecture.
• Experience in testing microservices applications and its integration with DevOps CI/CD pipeline, preferably using Microsoft Azure platform.
• Experience in cloud architecture and implementation features (OS, multi-tenancy, virtualization, orchestration, elastic scalability).
• Experience in modern application development platforms and databases.
• Excellent written and spoken English.

DESIRABLE QUALIFICATIONS

• Understanding of humanitarian and development contexts including prior programme or project management experience
• Understanding of civil registration systems and processes
• Knowledge of Arabic is an advantage.

COMPETENCIES

• Analyzing
• Planning and Organizing
• Creating and Innovating
• Learning and Researching
• Coping with Pressure and Setbacks
• Experience with working in a team on complex projects and against tight timelines.

CONDITIONS OF SERVICE

• The incumbent will be based in Beirut. Remote working modalities may be considered.
• The duration of the consultancy is 11 months with possibility of extension subject to availability of funds.
• Remuneration:

1. If the selected candidate was locally recruited, remuneration will be set at $1,833.40 per month.
2. If the selected candidate was internationally recruited, remuneration will be set at $7,677.16 per month.
3. Remuneration will depend on qualifications and experience of the candidate.

• One and a half day annual leave days per month.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Applicants should submit a cover letter and CV or UN Personal History Form demonstrating clearly the knowledge and experience required to meet the consultancy requirements via consultancy@unrwa.org clearly indicating the title of this consultancy “Consultancy - Information Systems Technical Specialist” subject line of the message. The deadline for the submission of applications is 5 May 2021.

UNRWA is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes applications from both women and men. UNRWA encourages applications from qualified and experienced female candidates. Only those applicants short-listed for interview will be contacted. UNRWA is a non-smoking environment.

Job Email id: consultancy(at)unrwa.org