United Nations OCHA Data Manager Job recruitment in Nairobi, Kenya September 2014
Position Type: Consultant
Background: The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has created a new humanitarian data platform – the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX). The goal of HDX is to make humanitarian data easy to find and use for analysis.
The platform will include three technical components: a dataset repository for sharing data from across the community; data visualization and analysis functionality to compare indicators across countries and crises; and standards for the exchange of humanitarian operational data (the Humanitarian Exchange Language or HXL). HDX is being piloted in Colombia and Kenya in 2014.
As part of its roll out in Kenya, the HDX team will be establishing a Data Lab in Nairobi.
Nairobi was chosen as the initial location for the Data Lab because it is a regional setting that is often dealing with multiple emergencies.
The HDX Data Lab requires an experienced Data Manager to collaborate with data partners.
Reporting Relationships: The consultant will report to the Lab Manager with oversight from the Statistician and Analytical Lead of the Humanitarian Data Exchange project who is based in New York.
Within the limits of delegated authority, the consultant will be responsible for the following:
- Work with partner organizations to support their data management processes.
- Advise partners on the use of data extraction processes for their data systems; develop scripts and APIs for data transferring when appropriate.
- Monitor the use of HDX by partners in the region and undertake outreach to bring new organizations into the HDX community.
- Ensure data freshness of region-specific data in HDX
- Promote the use of shared data and interoperability standards within partner spreadsheets and systems using the Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL).
- Manage and distribute standard reference data, including taxonomies, code lists, and geodata.
- Clean the common operational datasets for countries in the Eastern Africa region and move the cleaned files into the HDX platform.
- Work with non-traditional data sources (telcos, social media) to see what data can be used to inform humanitarian decision making.
- Take part in HDX project team meetings as required.
- Cleaned partner data and logical processes for sharing data with HDX.
- Agreements with data providers for sharing data with the HDX platform.
- Ongoing curation of data into the HDX analytical database.
- Cleaned common operational datasets for countries in the region.
- The use of HXL in partner spreadsheets or systems.
Education: First level university degree in computer science, information management, information technology, or related field.
Experience: At least five years of professional work experience with managing data systems. Proven experience in database programming.
Language: Fluency in English is required (both oral and written). Knowledge of another UN official language is an advantage.
Send CVs to Mark Slezak at slezak@un.org and Javier Teran at teran1@un.org with a copy to hdx@un.org.