Consultant: Facilitator for Knowledge Management Platform on Climate Risk Management

The UNDP Central Asia Multi-Country Programme on Climate Risk Management will assist the five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) to adjust their national development processes to address risks posed by current climate variability and future climate change. The UNDP Central Asian Multi-Country Programme on Climate Risk Management will seek to strengthen climate-related disaster risk reduction and adaptive capacity, promote early action, and provide the foundation for long-term investment to increase resilience across the region. The programme will act as an umbrella programme, supporting a wide-range of climate risk management initiatives across the region.

The UNDP Central Asian Multi-Country Programme on Climate Risk Management will address the main institutional, policy and financial barriers to catalysing systematic climate risk management and cost-effective adaptation across the region. For that reason, lessons-learned and results achieved through the programme and already existing climate risk management initiatives will be disseminated on a web-based knowledge management platform to inform future climate risk management endeavours.

Gathering climate risk management information in a knowledge management platform will establish region-wide knowledge and learning mechanisms to raise awareness and enhance the knowledge exchange, facilitate cross-country dialogue and cooperation at technical and scientific level. This information and data will be available for use by a wide-range of multi-country stakeholders, partner organisations, and international community. In this way, lessons-learned on adjusting national development processes and indentify information gaps will engage stakeholders and improve the situation for decision-makers and put the light on the need of new studies in the region.

A wide range of government, civil society, academic, and international development partners in Central Asia have expressed their support for the development a knowledge management platform and given the mandate to UNDP to establish the platform which will be launched in March-April 2011.

The long-term objective of the knowledge management platform is to increase capacity in Central Asia in climate risk management, and making use of various instruments to improve access to data for the basis of decision-making. The immediate objective is to provide relevant guidance and broad access to climate risk management information and to gather and share related best practices. The knowledge management platform will be developed and updated to facilitate knowledge sharing, information management, and networking, as it aims to bring knowledge, information and data onto one easily accessible platform.

The Knowledge Management Platform will provide the following:

• A knowledge centre including a library of publications, glossary of terms, and a wide range of tools to enable policy planners, decision-makers and project developers to make more informed decisions;
• Dissemination of latest research in the area;
• Share examples of successful cases for demonstration purposes, to be supplemented by examples provided by users through a discussion forum by logged-in users; and
• Facilitate and gather all programme communication in one place.

The overall responsibility of the KP Facilitator is to ensure that both internal and external communication for the programme are well-planned and executed in a way that allows for successful promotion and use of the platform both internally within UNDP as well as beyond.

The KP Facilitator will produce relevant knowledge products and improve them over time to become effective and value adding to partners and main users. Besides tasks pertaining to communication, the KP Facilitator will be required to act pro-actively while bearing responsibility for the quality of the content and improvement of the platform.

The KP seeks to appoint a Co-ordinator with a range of technical and management skills and practical experience in the area of knowledge sharing/management, communications, and organisational development. The KP Facilitator will be responsible for:

• Co-ordinating the day-to-day implementation of the KP work programme, working closely with a set of knowledge sharing officers and implementation teams based in partner organisations across Central Asia.
• Facilitating the KP network, including convening the network’s Steering committee and focal points to ensure oversight of implementation activities.
• Manage the communications and outreach for the KP, including building relationships with strategic partners in the region.

Responsibilities include:

A. Platform building and ongoing maintenance:

• Together with the five country offices, conduct a needs assessment that identifies target users in each country,  plan and execute needs assessment (interviews/survey) of the main users and provide an indication of what kind of information/support is needed, what kind of information exists and what kind of information can be shared;
• Support the design and development up of the knowledge platform (KP), prepare TOR for Request for Proposal for development of the KP; manage the relationship with the selected vendor;
• Engineer the integration of the Platform with other existing related platforms and databases. Manage the collaborative development of the GIS Databases and Interactive maps, with the relevant stakeholders organisations; Create and populate databases;
• Manage and improve the web-based platform and ensuring that it is operational and continuously up to date and attractive by identifying information gaps and propose needs assessment, conducting and coordinating user acceptance testing, by engaging colleagues in country offices and other main users, coordinating a process to gather feedback on user experience and improve customer service delivery;
• Monitoring successful implementation of the KP including its membership, convening, facilitating, logistics and planning;
• Upload project documents and research findings to the database, including writing briefs and abstracts to be presented;

B. Community building and partnership support

• Taking the lead in co-ordinating implementation to strengthen the KP Network in line with its objectives, working closely with Regional CRA-CRM Coordinator, assessing and building demand from prospective network members, acting as a champion for members’ interests and ensuring response to demand from the Implementation Team;
• Set up and coordinate an editorial committee with contribution from members of the KP network to facilitate the process of gathering content and enhance buy in for the project;
• Forecast emerging priorities for knowledge sharing on climate adaptation by staying in close touch with representatives of key stakeholder groups;
• Attend meetings, conferences and workshops, where appropriate, to promote the KP and to build or strengthen relationships with members of the KP’s climate adaptation community;
• Help management team to develop relationships with strategic partners who can help KP to accelerate progress towards its objectives;
• Support country offices with regular steering committee meetings (or as needed) and maintain regular and result-oriented communication with partners and participants, and ensure that minutes are taken from such discussions/communications;
• Nourish a vibrant communication on capacity development and provide guidance to all users through user guides, how-to guides, toolkits, etc.;
• Proactively and regularly engage in information exchange with relevant initiatives and institutions, such as governmental agencies, UN agencies, non-governmental organisations, insurance companies, research institutes and press agencies, from the region and outside to receive updates and new information/data;
• Manage the subscribers list, moderate, direct and filter messages, encourage member participation, facilitate electronic discussions;
• Compile and publish a newsletter that provides a brief but comprehensive review on relevant developments, events, research, publications etc. on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction;
• Consolidate responses from the users, requests for advice and assistance from members, undertake supplemental research, prepare summaries to queries, indexes and archives the replies on the website for future search and retrieval by members;
• Managed the Help Desk function. Users will be able to submit information/data requests to the Help Desk, for example for assembling an info-package on a particular topic, and if a task will take up to 1 day of work, the KP Facilitator will prepare the response. If a request will take more than a day, the KP Facilitator will assist the user to draft a ToR for a consultant (if needed);
• Analyse contributions and members’ questions to identify demand trends and knowledge gaps and bring new ideas regarding the content;
• Secure the document archives of the UNDP Central Asia Multi-Country Programme on Climate Risk Management;

C. Marketing and communications

• Develop and help to execute a marketing strategy, communication strategy and communication action plan for the programme in cooperation with Regional CRA-CRM Coordinator and Communication Unit in Bratislava;
• Organise an adequate event promotion campaign – for country offices, external stakeholders and media in the region (with support from the UNDP communication advisors) by developing and creating externally targeted media kits and write-ups;
• After the programme ends, the KP will be handed over to a regional host. It will be responsibility of the KP Facilitator, with the support of the CA-CRM Regional Coordinator, to identify a potential host institution for the KP and reach an agreement on KP maintenance beyond the programme’s life time; and
• Other tasks as advised by the supervisor.

Expected Outputs:

• Knowledge Platform (KP) development supported and regular maintenance provided.
• KP subscribers’ community formed and served according to their needs and objectives of the CA-CRM programme.
• Communications and marketing and exit strategies for KP developed and execution supported.

The Facilitator should be able to demonstrate considerable experience in co-ordinating networks and programmes, in knowledge sharing and editorial processes, in communications technologies and in working on climate change or related issues. The post holder will hold a Masters degree or equivalent qualification in a field related to environment and social development. The successful candidate will have outstanding interpersonal and presentation, including written skills and evidence of knowledge of climate change, vulnerability, impacts and adaptation strategies. He/she will be experienced in motivating and co-ordinating distributed teams and those from different cultural/linguistic backgrounds and be fully fluent in English and Russian. Demonstrable skills in website management and writing for the web are another key essential.

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity and fairness, by modelling the UN/UNDP’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission and strategic goals of UNDP; and
• Ability to manage workload with minimum supervision;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional/Technical Competencies:

• Co-ordination of knowledge networks (both face to face and online) and programmes, preferably in the region;
• Building and maintenance of web based knowledge platforms. This includes understanding of information architecture issues, extensive experience of writing and editing for the web, experience in dealing with subject matter experts with a scientific background, understanding of web marketing, experience managing vendors;
• Experience in partnership building and developing communication strategies targeting policy makers and researchers.

Education:

• Master degree in development, international relations, public affairs, information technology, communication, journalism and/or or related subject required.

Experience:

• At least 5 years experience in international development, preferably working in the area of knowledge management and/or communication;
• Demonstrated ability of facilitating networks and communities and growing their membership over time;
• Demonstrated ability to deal with a number of different stakeholders and involve them in the process of contributing content;
• Demonstrated ability of successfully managing knowledge platforms in all stages, from setting up to marketing;
• Good understanding of communications  and online marketing issues a distinctive advantage;
• Prior experience in a research or academic capacity an asset;
• Prior experience working with an international or multi-lateral organisation an asset;
• Experience in policy development process associated with environment, climate change and sustainable development an asset;
• Experience with maintaining websites an asset;
• Experience in working and collaborating with governments an asset;
• Experience working within the UN system an asset; and
• Extensive working experience in Eastern Europe & CIS an asset.

Language Requirements:

• Fluency and proficiency in English; very good working knowledge of Russian; or
• Fluency and proficiency in Russian; very good working knowledge of English; and
• Knowledge of any of local languages (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, Uzbek) an asset.

Evaluation of Applicants:

Applicants will be screened against minimum qualifications and specific technical experience set above. The candidates shortlisted will be further contacted and interviewed.

Supervision:

Working under the direct supervision and with guidance of the CA-CRM Programme Coordinator for the UNDP Central Asia Multi-Country Programme on Climate Risk Management, the KP Facilitator will be responsible for helping to build, manage, and facilitate the platform, comprised of practitioners from government, NGOs, CSOs, academic and research institutions, international development partners, the private sector, etc.