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UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, defend their rights, and help them fulfill their potential, from early childhood through adolescence.

At UNICEF, we are committed, passionate, and proud of what we do for as long as we are needed. Promoting the rights of every child is not just a job – it is a calling.

UNICEF is a place where careers are built. We offer our staff diverse opportunities for professional and personal development that will help them reinforce a sense of purpose while serving children and communities across the world. We welcome everyone who wants to belong and grow in a diverse and passionate culture, coupled with an attractive compensation and benefits package.

Visit our website to learn more about what we do at UNICEF.

For every child, the right to innovate

UNICEF works in some of the world’s toughest places, to reach the world’s most disadvantaged children. To save their lives. To defend their rights. To help them fulfill their potential.

Across 190 countries and territories, we work for every child, everywhere, every day, to build a better world for everyone.

And we never give up.

For every child...innovate

UNICEF has a 70-year history of innovating for children. We believe that new approaches, partnerships and technologies that support realizing children’s rights are critical to improving their lives.

The Office of Innovation is a creative, interactive, and agile team in UNICEF. We sit at a unique intersection, where an organization that works on huge global issues meets the start-up thinking, the technology, and the partners that turn this energy into scalable solutions.

UNICEF's Office of Innovation creates opportunities for the world's children by focusing on where new markets can meet their vital needs. We do this by:

• Connecting youth communities (or more broadly -- anyone disconnected or under-served) to decision-makers, and to each other, to deliver informed, relevant and sustained programmes that build better, stronger futures for children.
• Provoking change for children through an entrepreneurial approach -- in a traditionally risk averse field -- to harness rapidly moving innovations and apply them to serve the needs of all children.
• Creating new models of partnership that leverage core business values across the public, private and academic sectors in order to deliver fast, and lasting results for children.
  The Office of Innovation specifically looks to form partnerships around frontier technologies (like drones and UAVs, blockchain, 21st century skills, urban technologies, new banking tools, wearables and sensors, or 3D-Printing) that exist at the intersection of $100 billion business markets and 1 billion person needs – and to identify how they can grow and scale profitably and inclusively. 

Our team

We're an interdisciplinary team around the world tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling new technologies and practices. With our partners, we focus on convening and collaborating on new and different solutions, low- and high-tech, by:

• Looking at the 2–5-year horizon to evaluate emerging and trending technologies and to see how UNICEF can work with the private sector on doing better business while improving essential services for children.
• Investing in early-stage solutions that show great potential to positively impact children in the 02-year future including the Venture Fund that invests in open-source technology solutions from start-ups based in UNICEF’s programme countries.
• Identifying proven solutions that can be implemented at national scale in multiple countries – taking the ideas that help thousands in one country, bringing them to dozens of countries across multiple sectors, and impacting the lives of millions of children.”

How can you make a difference? 

• Draft Innovation Policy Framework: Support development of a foundational policy framework to guide and promote public sector innovation in Tamil Nadu.
• Innovation MEL system/Index Framework: Support creation of a MEL system to measure and track innovation progress, enabling data-driven decision-making.
• Improved Government Innovation Capacity: Improvements in the skills and knowledge of government officials to drive and support innovation, demonstrated through assessments and training.
• Support Development of Innovation roadmap for UNICEF Office for Tamil Nadu and Kerala
• COMPASS Public sector innovation module: Support development of a practical COMPASS module for UNICEF country offices and public sector professionals to facilitate innovation collaborations.

Your main responsibilities will be:

The consultant will collaborate closely with the Innovation Strategy Advisor, and the Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist within the Systems and Solutions team at UNICEF Office of Innovation and under the oversight of Chief, UNICEF Office for Tamil Nadu and Kerala to support Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission to develop public sector innovation policy, implement training plan for government officials and Monitoring, evaluation and learning framework so as to strengthen state policies to  benefit children and also to develop an innovation roadmap for UNICEF Office for Tamil Nadu and Kerala  on the following key areas:

A. Public Sector Innovation Policy Framework Development

• Support the co-creation and drafting of Tamil Nadu's Public Sector Innovation Policy & its Framework.
• Facilitate stakeholder consultations with government departments and ecosystem actors.
• Contribute to the development of a COMPASS handbook for public sector innovation collaborations.

B. Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning (MEL) System Design

• Co-develop the Innovation Monitoring, evaluation and learning Framework for TANII.
• Co-design proposal assessment templates and tracking dashboards.
• Support pilot testing of innovation assessment tools.

C. Innovation Index Framework Support

• Provide support on the peer review of development and launch of Tamil Nadu's Innovation Index Framework.
• Support alignment of Innovation capability assessment activities with the Index to improve effectiveness.

D. Support development of Innovation Training Journeys for public officials

• Support public sector consultations and planning for innovation training journey implementation.
• Support co-development of innovation training journey frameworks, operational plans, and quality assurance.
• Support field preparations, data collection, and analysis for the innovation training journey.
• Facilitate sensemaking activities and co-develop learning needs for public officials.
• Support the implementation of capacity building activities/workshops.

E. Train-the-Trainer (ToT) Activities

• Support the identification of ToT needs across pilot workstreams.
• Support the mapping of relevant stakeholders/trainers.
• Co-develop ToT training modules for each workstream.

F. Develop Innovation roadmap for UNICEF Office for Tamil Nadu and Kerala

• Develop UNICEF Tamil Nadu State office Innovation Vision and Roadmap
• Develop a thought paper on Innovation for Social Impact in Tamil Nadu and Kerala aligned to office’s vision document.
• Support consultations with key stakeholders and informants towards developing the roadmap.

If you would like to know more about this position, please review the complete Job Description here:  TOR Public sector innovation consultant.pdf

To qualify as an advocate for every child you will have… 

• An advanced university degree (master’s or higher) in Social Sciences, Public Policy, Economics, or a related field.
  • A first University Degree in a relevant field combined with two additional years of professional experience may be accepted in lieu of an Advanced University Degree.
• A minimum of 8 years of relevant professional experience in:
  • Social Policy & Social Protection
  • Governance and institutional strengthening
• Knowledge of:
  • Experience working with multilateral organizations, or UN agencies desirable.
  • Experience working at a sub-national level on innovation.
  • Experience drafting policy frameworks.
  • Experience in MEL systems design preferred.
  • Understanding of State government systems
• Developing country work experience and/or familiarity with emergencies is considered an asset.
• Fluency in English is required. Knowledge of another official UN language (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian or Spanish) or a local language is an asset.

Travel:

• The consultant is expected to travel to Stockholm and Dehli, India for a stay of 4 nights for each trip.
• The consultant is responsible for arranging his/her own travel, including visa and travel insurance.
• The consultant will work from UNICEF Chennai office and will be responsible for arranging his/her own computer/laptop

Duty station: Onsite, Chennai

Payment details and further considerations

• Payment of professional fees will be based on the submission of agreed deliverables. UNICEF reserves the right to withhold payment in case the deliverables submitted are not up to the required standard or in case of delays in submitting the deliverables on the part of the consultant. 

How to apply:

• Interest applicant is required to submit a financial proposal with all-inclusive fee.  Please see the financial proposal template.  Consultancy Financial Offer template.docx
• Financial proposal must include travel costs (economy class) and daily subsistence allowance, if travel is required as per TOR and any other estimated costs: visa, travel/health insurance
• Applications without a financial proposal will not be considered.

General Terms and Conditions:

Please review UNICEF's General Terms and Conditions for Consultants here for important information regarding contract obligations, including medical insurance, SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) vaccination, and income tax requirements.

For every Child, you demonstrate…

UNICEF's values of Care, Respect, Integrity, Trust, Accountability, and Sustainability (CRITAS).

To view our competency framework, please visit here.

UNICEF is here to serve the world’s most disadvantaged children, and our global workforce must reflect the diversity of those children. The UNICEF family is committed to include everyone, irrespective of their race/ethnicity, age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socio-economic background, or any other personal characteristic.

UNICEF offers reasonable accommodation for consultants/individual contractors with disabilities. This may include, for example, accessible software, travel assistance for missions or personal attendants. We encourage you to disclose your disability during your application in case you need reasonable accommodation during the selection process and afterwards in your assignment.

UNICEF has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNICEF, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. UNICEF also adheres to strict child safeguarding principles. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to these standards and principles and will therefore undergo rigorous reference and background checks. Background checks will include the verification of academic credential(s) and employment history. Selected candidates may be required to provide additional information to conduct a background check.

Remarks: 

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted and advance to the next stage of the selection process.

Individuals engaged under a consultancy or individual contract will not be considered “staff members” under the Staff Regulations and Rules of the United Nations and UNICEF’s policies and procedures and will not be entitled to benefits provided therein (such as leave entitlements and medical insurance coverage). Their conditions of service will be governed by their contract and the General Conditions of Contracts for the Services of Consultants and Individual Contractors. Consultants and individual contractors are responsible for determining their tax liabilities and for the payment of any taxes and/or duties, in accordance with local or other applicable laws.

The selected candidate is solely responsible to ensure that the visa (applicable) and health insurance required to perform the duties of the contract are valid for the entire period of the contract. Selected candidates are subject to confirmation of fully-vaccinated status against SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) with a World Health Organization (WHO)-endorsed vaccine, which must be met prior to taking up the assignment. It does not apply to consultants who will work remotely and are not expected to work on or visit UNICEF premises, programme delivery locations or directly interact with communities UNICEF works with, nor to travel to perform functions for UNICEF for the duration of their consultancy contracts.

Additional information about working for UNICEF can be found here.